“Unless you have a problem you probably never would have came here”
True. But “a problem” is one thing. That implies the potential of some sort of solution.
The complete failure of the product within days of buying it is another thing all together.
Support from staff and other consumers would be great, in theory. But the message we seem to be getting from all sources is “WD products (or this one at least) really aren’t very good. Don’t expect much.”
Here’s my situation:
We had a computer that we would no longer be able to use (it had to be returned to someone else). In order to save the files on this computer, we purchased a WD external drive. We thought this would be a convenient way to transfer the files and a good option as a backup, holding large older files, etc.
We moved the files to the drive, cleaned off the old computer and returned it.
Foolishly, thinking that a piece of hardware like an external hard drive could last a few days, we didn’t immediately move all the files over to our new computer. Silly us. I guess I should have read this forum first to read all the stories of people who lost their data because these drives DO, in fact, tend to fail very quickly.
Now, computers do not recognize the drive. We’ve taken it to a family member who is a very experienced IT professional (he runs the networking and data security for a major international firm). We’ve taken it back to the retailer. We’ve sat on the phone with tech support at WD for hours. Nobody can determine any sign that the device is actually fixable or usable.
Fine, people shouldn’t use this as a sole backup. Our mistake. We’re terrible people for thinking that a piece of technology could do it’s job reliable. But we were hardly trusting this unit as our primary storage device for years, or even months, of data.
Beyond this, though, I’d appreciate actual answers to my original questions, which were:
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How common are these failures? Based on the two replies received so far, the FAQ I mentioned in my original post, and the feedback from WD call center staff, the answer seems to be “Very”. Nobody seems to be indicating that this is an unusual occurrence or one that might have various solutions to try. Basically, it sound like these devices often stop working without warning.
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Do the marketing department and senior management know that the “advice” given for the use of their products is basically “Don’t rely on these products”? Not only the call centre staff, but now the members of this forum seem to be saying that it’s not worth using these machines. Perhaps if all the marketing material, packaging, etc. didn’t implicitly AND explicitly state what a wonderful backup option WD drives are, I could accept this. I work in marketing and I would be incredibly upset if I knew that my frontline staff (or anyone else) was not fulfilling my company’s brand and product promises.
3. Why does WD only have two data recovery centres in Canada and both of them are located in and around Toronto? It’s a big country. As mentioned in #1 above, failure of these drives seems to be an everyday occurrence. Maybe, just maybe, it would be a worthwhile customer service initiative to enable customers to find a service centre of some sort within, say, a thousand miles of their home. I assume other countries experience similar lack of coverage.
- Where do I send the bill for data recovery? It’s absolutley disgusting, frankly, that a company would sell a product that they know is shoddy (see #1 above) with misleading messages (see #2) and not have their own resources or partners available to minimize the effect of these issues (see #3). It’s only fair that the company compensate consumers who are out of pocket just because they put a little bit of trust in that company.