Wow.
A lesson in customer care, absolutely, totally, and without a margin of doubt NOT. Western Digital - I have no idea if any of your employees at any level ever bother to look in these forums, though frankly, if they do, I’m not holding out any more hope of any sense of “responsibility” to the customers who pay good money, in good faith, for what amounts to complete and utter junk.
And frankly, it is junk. It is as others say in this forum, “Unfit for purpose” - and so far that applies both to your products and to your “service” - which is both confusing, and places burdens on your customers, that no other industry could ever hope to get away with. I find it very unlikely that I will EVER buy another WD product, and honestly, I would be hard pushed to accept one if it was free.
Why do I feel this way?
Three World Books - an earlier “World Edition White Light” and two “Lives” which at this point are less than a month old.
Tell me, then, why one of the 2Tb Live boxes has died, a week into it’s life, as did the “World Edition 2TB” - both in exactly the same manner - during an upgrade of flaky firmware. I storngly susepct it was pure fluke that the second LIVE did not also fail.
Now, Western Digital’s philosophy, their “marketing proposition” is this: They will sell you a “box” on which to store your data - note, YOUR data - and will, in the event their manufacturing fails to perform as it should, lock you out of that data - YOUR data. That’s like having a mailbox on your property to which only the mail man has the key. It **bleep**.
I have, in sheer desperation, been forced into voiding warranty simply to recover something that belongs to ME. On a Hard Drive I paid for. In a plastic enclosure I paid for. Now, let me get this right. I paid (yeah, I’m in the UK, so why in the name of sweet Jeffrey your RMA is insistent in charging me in DOLLARS, I have no idea - but also for far more than my local computer superstore charged me for the product in the first place, having done the conversion back to the currency that is actually the legal tender of my country - hint - it is NOT, NOT, NOT the US Dollar, despite the very evident fact that WD thinks everyone in the UK speaks American. Yeah, I’m angry at you in a big way.) - for a “box” which is essentially a 3.5" internal SATA drive, with a basic NIC bolted onto it, and a bit of plastic. Now, looking at the cost to buy a replacement WD20EARS on it’s own - £125 give or take, that makes the NIC and the plastic, together, worth precisely NOTHING, given I paid £124 for each of the LIVE boxes. I can quite see why now too.
Stupidly - and it was stupid - I figured that the “Live” units would at least be more reliable than the World Edition White Light was. #FAIL. That alone was the only reason I gave Western Digital another try. But to end up locked out of my data TWICE on two different WD products BEFORE I had the chance to figure out how the stupid back up programs you bundle even work - that is unmerchantable product. Pure and simple.
Now, my warranty is voided because I opened the units. WHAT? In what universe is that either reasonable, or legal?
Seriously? If you made cars, would you invalidate my warranty because I opened the bonnet (yes, I’m BRITISH) to attend the engine? I so wholeheartedly wish I’d gone for the Qnap instead. At least I could have inserted and removed drives as I saw fit. However, Western Digital seeks to avoid it’s very evident failures, on the basis that I asserted a complete lack of recket science, and opened a plastic clam case, which effectively pulls apart ANYWAY - and which they give away, FREE - at least compared to the cost of the raw drive alone.
The thing is, I didn’t even want the cases replaced - I’m happy to keep those. ALL I WANTED was a drive that worked longer than a week. But wait. Because my data was worth something to me - it’s taken me A WEEK to get all my data off a badly failed WD20EARS HDD, and another TWO MINUTES in Linux to see that not only is the drive itself falling apart, but the software implementation on these drives is also completely FLAWED. Who the **bleep** makes a single Disk RAID array? Why, why would you? That’s asking for trouble 101.
So. Upshot is, I have one 3.5" SATA drive that is as much use as a doorstop to me, and two other drives, another WD20EARS and a WD20EADS - which may as well be 4Tb of external USB enclosure drive - only I have no faith in storing my data on them at all now. Same goes for the 1Tb WD Essentials Portable USB Drive I have.
In return, Western Digital now have an Ex Customer who will henceforth VERY VOCALLY ensure that nobody he comes into contact with at any point in the future will EVER buy Western Digital - for a number of reasons.
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Utter failure of the products, complete lack of reliability.
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Utter failure of Customer “Support” channel - it’s non existent, even assuming you can figure out the web site.
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Laughable Warranty - read non existent. Example - even if our product fails, screw your data. Not our problem.
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Utter lack of recognition of the country your customer is in. I AM NOT AMERICAN, COMPRENDE?
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Impossible Returns process, aside from the Dollar thing. Sure, I’ll pay to reutrn YOUR failure to you, in my PRINTING costs, in my Shipping costs, and through the nose while you bill me £40 MORE than I paid for the stupid thing in the first place.
Well, I’m sure five reasons are enough. But seriously, first unit - the White Light - 3 Weeks to fail. Second Unit a LIVE, bought only four weeks ago, failed within a week. What are the odds on the third, LIVE unit failing soon? Pretty High I think - and Yes, I have it all backed up ready - to a HITATCHI Deskstar.
I’m pretty sure nobody from WDE will even bother to acknowledge this, or do anything about it - and for me it will simply be a £500 loss all said - not counting the WEEKS of time I’ve spent recovering MY data from YOUR failed and flawed devices, or the work time lost, or the life expectancy of my person, now considerably reduced. I just hope you do something before your LAST customer leaves you - because frankly, I won’t be buying another **bleep** thing from you, the way things are. Oh - feel free to contact me WD, if you feel you’ve got a case to answer at all, but mean time, I’m off to do my duty, and will be contacting as many computer and tech press people as I can to let them know of my experiences with your products - and I do know a few. I’ll lay odds you won’t even acknowledge this, much less move to repair the damage you’ve done to me, my business, and yourselves.
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> Likewise, agreed - the importance of data and back ups. The back up…was on the failed WD drive - it was intended to be a mirror of the other …failed WD drive. 
