Refurbished Hard Drive - Dead!

As we all know straying into refurbished territory can lead to negative results. A few months ago I bought a refurbished 750GB WD "Green" HDD for $49. It sat on a shelf until one day last week I needed it to backup a computer I was working on. Long story short the drive failed to initialize, failed the WD Lifeguard Diagnostic utility. The "click of death" was also a giveaway that it was doomed from the start. So I request an RMA.. funny enough this too failed to generate lol! An email to WD which got a quick response and a free return shipping label.

Today the replacement drive arrives so I take it out to inspect it and test it out. My original 750GB drive has been replaced with a fully operational 2TB drive :major now that's what I call customer service lol!

 

That's refreshing in this day and age.

However I must admit that I am biased and swear by Seagate, and OCZ for SSD. That being said I must admit I have nicknamed WD (after MUCH negative experience) "Western Crapital". They remind me of an early QuadraJet carbeuretor. When they work, they work perfectly. If they're not perfect, call a tow truck.

:-D

 

It is refreshing which is why I had to post it, good news is always better than bad.. at least in a forum dedicated to fixing what's gone wrong lol.

Funny enough I once had three bad Seagate HDD's years ago.. never had a bad one since. WD is ok I'm not swayed one way or the other. However this laptop I'm on I got as an open-box deal.. a week later I found out why it was near half price. The HDD (WD lol) was giving intermittent issues. I RMA'd it.. dropped in the new drive been solid so far. After saying that I shall back it up twice over haha.

 

:wave

Funny you should mention Seagate as quality.
I used to be a big Seagate fan until this past year.

I had 4 hdds die suddenly ( even though I ran their diagnostic on a regular basis.)

I since have switched to WD for my hdds and love them.

My choice for SSD was Samsung 830 series - great.

We all have opinions and that is what makes this forum great.

 

Truthfully I never had a good experience with WD, or Maxtor. I've owned Seagates since generation 7 and have found the ones I received quite durable. My old gen 8 is now the backup in the spare room "$60 special". I call it that, because the tower was e-waste, and I got a nice OCZ SSD on sale for $59.99. As time went on, I even recovered a CPU which doubled the L2 cache, and had a higher FSB frequency.

When I think back on all the "Frankenputers" I've cobbled together, Seagate drives went into most of them.

But, sometimes it is luck of the draw too. That's my old "VCR rule". You can spit a thousand VCRs off the same assembly line, same components, same materials, and frankly a few just won't work right.

 

I have mixed emotions about WD hard drives . . . while I have never had one fail per se (I know people who have) I do find them to be prone to operational quirks and seem to get noisier and buggier as they age. I've only bought one of them myself (I've used several of them), and it worked ok for a few years. It went out of my operational control in a rescue build long ago. I've owned no Maxtor products.

I will never own another Hitachi drive . . . the ones I have purchased or have had the misfortune to use have been bad; to be fair it's been about four years since I've dealt with one of their drives.

I'm firmly in the Seagate corner - specifically their Barracuda line. For my first build in 2004 I bought an 80gb Barracuda, then a few months later a 120gb for a secondary drive . . . they performed flawlessly in that computer till I switched them out for larger capacity drives, and then in other builds of mine since. In the last 9 years they have been used without issue. At last count I currently own 10 Seagate Barracuda SATA drives, and none of them have failed or had issue. The only thing I can report is the 120GB drive recently started making an audible "click" now and then, which so far hasn't caused any operational issues . . . could be a sign of impending failure, but seeing how this particular drive has been in use almost constantly for 8+ years (and been moved into 3 consecutive builds, has been reformatted uncounted times, and is currently being used as a "on the fly" DVR drive) I couldn't complain if it finally gasps it's last soon.

On the topic of this post, I bought a refurbished 1.5TB Seagate Barracuda for around $70.00 two years ago to serve as a NAS and it has performed flawlessly as well. I guess I may have been lucky with Seagate . . . but with 10 drives it can't just be luck alone.

 

They had a high failure rate with their 1st? gen sandforce controller based drives.

 

LOL Speak of the 'friggin devil . . . I just went in search of some RJ45 cable in the nether regions of my furnace room's void space and noticed my ancient grimy wooden box of forlorn auto parts, not looked in since being salvaged from the garage I owned for 18 yrs when I moved years ago. I just had to check, and sure enough, there are some bits and pieces of the Quadrajet tribe laying among the wreckage. Ahhh, '68 Chevelle, I miss thee (along with weighing 190lbs and actually having abs . . . )