Western Digital External Hard Drives SUCK

JacqueChoi

It appears I have just lost all of my 3D work I'd done in the past 4 years.

Went online, and apparently it is a common problem with Western Digital external Hard Drives, particularly the MyBook.





So... uhhhh yeh, don't buy this PoS. I lost my stuff.

oh well, at least I have my webpage up.

:[

ironbearxl

Setup a magazine rack in your house, then knock that shit over.

fattkid

Yep. Mine crapped out too, after about 6 months. Piece of poop.

Lee3dee

can you take it apart? and install it into your main machine? Try and see if you can at least read it from windows.

bounchfx

mine 'crapped out' after like 3 months, I turned it on one time and everything was just POOF like it had never been there! but it was just the drive tables that got screwed up, was so worried but then I found a way to restore them. been working great since.

EarthQuake

Honestly you should feel ashamed for trusting any work to a USB hard drive. Back your shit up if its important, on multiple sources, and for christ sake do not keep your work on a USB hard drive.

Cojax

Back your stuff up on every hard drive you own. Have two in your computer? or have two computers? put it on both...Back your main work pieces up on your web server if you own a website. Then put stuff on your portable hard drive. Having all your stuff in just one location is asking for it...I don't know how you would sleep at night knowing that lol.

Slum

also, back that shit up on removable media like dvd. They are prone to scratches, but will last for eons if untouched.

I have a 250g WD Passport that I carry to and from work every day, and it hasn't given me any problems at all.

Thegodzero

I have a 320g passport, it pretty much lives at work as my back up, back up. I need another one for at home for my home back up...

bearkub

From personal experience, the USB hard drives that use full sized desktop HDD's fail waaaaaaay more than the ones that use the smaller laptop sized HDD's. Over the past year I have been doing multiple (and I do mean multiple...) backups of data from servers to a portable storage for usage and archival. Of the drives we have used, we have lost 2 Maxtor External drives and 2 Western Digital MyBooks. I have seen the problems with them, as they all seem to exhibit the same behavior right before they kick the bucket. As always, your mileage may very, but usually you start getting errors about not being able to save to "E: \$Mft" or something where "E: \" is your USB drive, then shortly after kablooey.

My opinion is, the larger HDDs were never designed to be portable or stored in the small enclosures they are and make them very prone to overheating and physical damage from very minor movement. I have had a Western Digital Passport drive that has rode in my backpack for over 2 years and never had a single problem and has taken its fair share of being smacked around. I bought another one about 3 or 4 months ago and it runs like a champ as well. I have also used ones from Maxtor and Seagate that used the laptop sized HDD and worked just as well.

If you really need to save to a USB drive and be portable, I would recommend one of the following:

http://www.westerndigital.com/en/products/index.asp?cat=9&language=en
http://www.maxtor.com/en/external-drives/portable-hard-drive/
http://freeagent.seagate.com/en-us/hard-drive/portable-hard-drive/Free-Agent.html

If you would rather have something a little less mobile with larger storage capacity, then the best bet would be to find a seperate enclosure with an active cooling system (read: fans) and buy a couple big ol' HDD's when they are on sale.

Recommended:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817145136


If you really want to get fancy, you can get enclosures now in the consumer range that will support multiple drives (2-4) which you can set up in a mirrored RAID to have some redundancy for protection. Similar to this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817707156

Hope this helps in the future.

Jeremy Lindstrom

The WD passport drives are the shit, never had any issues with the few I have had.

Kovac

Both my 500 gig mybook and my 160 gig passport shit out on me... I shoulda learned after the passport but didn't realize how epic of a fail WD was (though obviously you either get a great drive or one that dies after 3-6 months).

1 TB fantom drives are on sale right now though, very tempting:

http://www.macmall.com/macmall/shop/detail.asp?Redir=1&description=Fantom+Drives-GreenDrive+1TB+External+eSATA%2FUSB+2.0+Hard+Drive-External+Hard+Drives&store=macmall&dpno=7532251&source=zwb12166&adcampaign=email,zwb12166&wt.mc_id=zwb12166

PfhorRunner

RAID 1, and network storage.
I have a distrust for Western Digital... Hitachi too.

You can try to take it apart, and put the drive into your machine, sometimes external HDDs fail because of the built in controller. Also, the logic board is a pretty common thing to die, which are easily replaced, just buy an identical HDD (check the model number on the sticker of the HDD) and unscrew the bad one from the bottom, and replace it with the new one. Just make sure to not break any seals, and definitely do not unscrew anything to get to the platters.

Good Luck!

James Edwards

Yeah I've had 2 passports, both of which I beat the shit out of and they are still good to go.

PolyHertz

I havn't done a complete backup of my hdd in about 5 years, but every so often I'll get a new hdd for one reason or another and just transfer everything to it, along with burning a few DL dvds of the most important stuff just in case. I used to back up everything on CDs years ago, which got to be a bit much with 100+ stacks each time, but I've alays trusted making backups to discs before secondary hdds.

leilei

i'd recommend Seagate, but uh, their drives suck too especially that 7200.11 batch.

Dusty

I had a western digital that lasted 10 years, I only replaced it because it was only 20gb. It had been sitting in the trunk of my car for about a year before I pulled it out from all the junk to get some of my old crappy art institute work off it. Still booted up just fine. I now have a 350g internal and a 250g portable. Western Digital is my BRAND!

CrazyMatt

Guess what buddy I lost 8 years of solid work on my last hard drive and you know (it was a western digital :O)
Just as I was backing it up, it went kaputt on me.

BUT....

If you can explain you're problem with the current WD HD you have (Before hitting it on something and possibly scratching the disks) could you tell me
A.) Was it one of those pocket WD EHD devices?
B.) Does the computer not read it? and say it's got a problem?
C.) Does it not spin at all and does the light not turn on?

Answer me those and I maybe...(just maybe) be able to save you're ass).

I've had this happen to me several times already with all of my work/movies/music (you name it) except porn (bad idea ^^)

Blaizer

i never have had a problem with a HD. I use WD since too many years, and i have some very very old WD external drives; they run as the first day

A hard drive is sopposed to be static, if you move your HD you can have serious problems. Vibration is letal, so if you use external drives, plug them to your computer and leave them in a place without touching them. I know too many people who moves their drives when they are on, and as result, they lost their files.

This happens with all brands, WD is a great one. Their warranty is 5 years (at least for my internal drives), so if someone lost his HD, ya know!, you will receive a new one as replacement! .

Do always 2 backups

Wahlgren

Had a WD... or well i still do but the power cables messed up and since they use special fancy ones i have to play detective. So far... i havent bothered.

rolfness

not trying to be an ass but you should have backed stuff up. using portable storage as your only place for keeping stuff is asking for trouble. Invest in a Raid setup. once you get it running you need not even think about backing things up because its all done automatically.

I use only WD drives and Ive never had one fail on me yet.

Xenobond

Yep. My myBook took a crap on me, too. Would only keep connect/disconnect over and over. Out of warranty for like 3 months before it started to do that. Decided to just crack it open, but it just does not do anything when connected directly to sata hookups.

Picked up a Toshiba portable drive. Works like a charm and runs off usb power. yay

ElysiumGX

I've owned a MyBook for a couple years. It hasn't given me many problems, but I haven't used it often. Honestly, it's not very well made. And it is a typical hard drive, so it's not portable at all. I will say mine did survive a couple 7 hour flights, a few shorter flights, and a move...all within a luggage bag, and it still works. But I wouldn't trust it with important files. Just copies. So, when you backup, have more than one copy on a different drive.

The passports are great. When I find a reason to buy one, I will. For now, I have a USB stick on my keychain.

TomDunne

I had a catastrophic drive failure about 12 years ago, and still won't buy Maxtor hard drives. Hate hate hate.

Anyway, rather than just archive via my own hard disks or DVD-R, I pay about $12/month for a web host with 500gb of space and also back up everything there. They make weekly backups, and store their backups offsite, so the odds of actually losing all my data are pretty much zero. If you only keep your data in your house, optical media or not, you're still just one unexpected event away from losing both the originals and the backups.

Justin Meisse

If you have a hard drive it's gonna die eventually, it's a mechanical device. Trust me, I've had to return hundreds of every hard drive brand imaginable. Buy harddrives based on their phone support and warranty :-P

Tumerboy

well, most of my shit is on my mybook (haven't had an issue yet, and I've had it for a while. . .)

I've got what I can fit, backed up on my internal drive (but I think that one might be going)

So if WD is crap, what's the good brand these days? For a long time all I'd ever used was Maxtor, without a problem, but everyone told me that they were crap and WD was the shit, so I switched. . . now who do I switch to?

Peris

EarthQuake wrote: »

Honestly you should feel ashamed for trusting any work to a USB hard drive. Back your shit up if its important, on multiple sources, and for christ sake do not keep your work on a USB hard drive.

i had my work backed up on 2 separate usb drives, thinking i would be playing it safe that way. Then I managed to drop and break both of them in the same week ;o. Good thing i had everything backed up on my main pc as wel! Now i have my personal work backed up on my work pc, home pc, laptop and an extra usb drive just to be sure

debaser

oh man wish i never clicked on this thread. I've never heard of any issues before.
I've got a 1TB mybook at home and a SEVERE case of OCD

maybe i can leave work at lunch and check on it.
:poly142:

|Buddy|

I'm using 4 internal WD 500gig drives for last 2 years and I've had no problems so far.

Justin Meisse

Tumerboy wrote: »

well, most of my shit is on my mybook (haven't had an issue yet, and I've had it for a while. . .)

I've got what I can fit, backed up on my internal drive (but I think that one might be going)

So if WD is crap, what's the good brand these days? For a long time all I'd ever used was Maxtor, without a problem, but everyone told me that they were crap and WD was the shit, so I switched. . . now who do I switch to?

My first IT job was at a small town computer store, we built our systems with WD harddrives so of coarse I had to return hundreds of WD drives. I had the opinion that WD drives were shit. My next job was at another store that used Seagate drives - same thing. I went on to work IT at an office and I was returning Maxtor drives. See the pattern?

Tumerboy

Justin_Meisse wrote: »

My first IT job was at a small town computer store, we built our systems with WD harddrives so of coarse I had to return hundreds of WD drives. I had the opinion that WD drives were shit. My next job was at another store that used Seagate drives - same thing. I went on to work IT at an office and I was returning Maxtor drives. See the pattern?

HA HA! Pattern? What pattern?

I like the idea of an NAS RAID 1 system with printer server built in. Anyone got one going? Which are you using and how do you like it?

notman

WD use to be THE harddrive to get. In recent years though, they've earned a reputation of being unreliable. That being said, I've never had an issue with any of few I have (got for free). I also have a Seagate Barracuda (7200rpm) and it has been pretty solid for me. Typically, I recommend Seagate or Maxtor. Now that they are the same company, it will probably result in the same quality between the two

Jox: I didn't see any updates, but did you follow the advice about taking the drives out of the enclosure and putting them in your computer to recover the data?

sir-knight

you sure it's the hardrive or just the enclosure? like the guys have said, pull that shit apart and put it into your pc to see if the drive still works.

I've had 5 hard drive enclosures and the powersupplies or chips connecting the power die long before the drive.

EarthQuake

Honestly, ANY USB drive, and on top of that ANY harddrive for any computer ever made is going to be prone to failure, there are no failure proof brands. You can squable about which brand has a 2.13% failure rate and which has a 2.37% failure rate but at the end of the day you're putting your data on an unreliable medium, if it is important, find some suitable backup methods. A harddrive is a harddrive, they have moving parts, they get hot, and they will all die eventually.

I always find it funny that when someone has a drive that dies, all of a sudden the manufacture is terrible, and they're making faulty products! Honestly, google *drive model* + failure and you'll see people complaining about virtually every product on the market, ever.

oXYnary

Drive manufacturing has gotten cheaper as the competition for byte size has gotten larger. Remember when they used to have 5 , 3, 2, and now 1 year warranties? The best bet is to look for drives with the highest warranty period. From what I have seen in the past, its usually seagates.

I feel your pain however, one of my usb laptop portable drives went kabloey. No warning. Worked at work, went home and suddenly the drive wouldn't mount. Recovery programs see the partition, but cant access the data (thus far at least).

Worst part? ALLLLL my music was on it. I still have it sitting around here trying to figure a way to get it off with a failed drive start unit.

Im living dangerously according to EQ it seems. I have strip raided my home box, and only currently have this new usb drive backing everything up and using between home/work. I cant justify though a DVD burner for this old machine. I guess I need to find a 3.5 for my external usb enclosure to add another level of protection.

rollin

sorry to hear..
but:

0. working folder
1. backup on DVD
2. backup on external hd (search web for "modelname + problems")
3. evtl backup on 2nd external hd

thats how i do it and thats why i don´t loose any work anymore

if you manage to loose all 4 backups than get yourself some champagne and celebrate

Joao Sapiro

i have at least 5 ext HD , so far 3 in the last month failed, i really want to find a better way to backup , dvd is out of question tho...

warby

Justin_Meisse wrote: »

If you have a hard drive it's gonna die eventually, it's a mechanical device. Trust me, I've had to return hundreds of every hard drive brand imaginable. Buy harddrives based on their phone support and warranty :-P

TRUTH !!!!!!!!!

i have at least 1 hard drive die on me every year all my friends for the past 10 years have be going on and on and on about how maxtor is the most reliable manufacturer so about 90% of the the hard drives i owned where maxtor and guess what 90% of the ones that died on me where maxtor too there is no trust worthy brand

i trie to have my backup in 4 locations:
1 "my main hd that i also work on"
2 a usb "mybook" yes one of those
3 online on a webserver
4 burned on a dvd and than thrown on a huge archive pile

but i am not good at all with keeping all 4 locations up to date

Justin Meisse

Check this awesome piece of shit out
Century KD25/35PRO HDD Duplicator

sir-knight

hope you guys with the seagates aren't part of that hugeass firmware recall/mandatory flash order.... almost all drives of the 7200.11 500gb+ lines need a new firmware.


Else they brick on boot.

Mister Sentient

Western Digital My Book Studio Edition II

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=410

I'm considering getting one of these units and creating a RAID 1 config. It'll mainly be used as a central media (music, videos etc) repository. Anyone have experience with these? Are they overpriced junk?

Edit: Thinking of plugging it into a wirless router as a network drive.

bearkub

Justin_Meisse wrote: »

Check this awesome piece of shit out
Century KD25/35PRO HDD Duplicator

HA. I actually had to use one of these in the past months. Some of the stuff the lawyers needed from us needed to be transferred to another drive with no chance of messing with the data on the existing drive. They are...different to use.

Justin Meisse

software audit?

check out the video on the link, I don't know what the narrator is saying but I'm guessing it's along the lines of slaying mighty dragons.

notman

EarthQuake wrote: »

Honestly, ANY USB drive, and on top of that ANY harddrive for any computer ever made is going to be prone to failure, there are no failure proof brands. You can squable about which brand has a 2.13% failure rate and which has a 2.37% failure rate but at the end of the day you're putting your data on an unreliable medium, if it is important, find some suitable backup methods. A harddrive is a harddrive, they have moving parts, they get hot, and they will all die eventually.

I always find it funny that when someone has a drive that dies, all of a sudden the manufacture is terrible, and they're making faulty products! Honestly, google *drive model* + failure and you'll see people complaining about virtually every product on the market, ever.

My comments were also based on a company who interviewed me and told me that a majority of my work (at that time) would be replacing the WD Hdds because they were constantly failing, and the computer warrant would only replace it with the same drive, so they would fail every 6mos.
That being said, I agree with the rest of your statement Mechanical parts are never guaranteed, and at the speeds hard drives run at, they are prone to failure. Every manufacturer has their bad batches.

JacqueChoi

notman wrote: »

WD use to be THE harddrive to get. In recent years though, they've earned a reputation of being unreliable. That being said, I've never had an issue with any of few I have (got for free). I also have a Seagate Barracuda (7200rpm) and it has been pretty solid for me. Typically, I recommend Seagate or Maxtor. Now that they are the same company, it will probably result in the same quality between the two

Jox: I didn't see any updates, but did you follow the advice about taking the drives out of the enclosure and putting them in your computer to recover the data?

YAAAY!

It's 5pm! I'm heading home and gonna try that right now! I'll let you know how it goes (and thanks for the advice).

Lesson learned, back up on DVD, External HD, Locally, and Online for SUPER important things.




God damn I hope this works.

Marine

you can put things other than porn on external drives?

Mark Dygert

G3L

From what I've learned in reading through this thread, it's safe to say, WD's and Seagates will crap eventually, so the solution to our drives being faulty and losing all our work? Back them up on several hard drives and it's a good thing I've done that thus far throughout these past two years.

I have three external HDD's and my PC but I feel like going all out and buying a 1TB and backing up everything onto that as well. Any recommendations for 1TB externals?

NyneDown

hahaha...awesome pic, Vig.

I'm probably going to jinx the hell out of myself, but I've had my wester digital for around 4 years now and it's worked great. And I'm really having second thoughts about clicking "post reply" cuz it would suck if I did just jinx myself :-/

rolfness

Marine wrote: »

you can put things other than porn on external drives?

mate you dont want to put porn on external harddrives.. imagine losing it all.. the only reason I got Raid 1 is to keep my porn safe !

JacqueChoi

WOOT!

It did backup!




And yes, sorry. I use the term '3D work' in lieu of my porn. Force of habit.

so YEH! I totally recovered all of my '3D work', and I'm sofa king relieved.


FUCK YOU WD!!!




now im gonna play teh shit outta FEAR 2