“My Book” failed after 3 years. I remember Western Digital’s RLL drives from the early 90’s. They were the most prone to sector drift I had ever seen. I thought things had changed with IDE. I guess not. I just lost everything I ever held precious because my 500GB USB WD drive failed. I suppose the whole “trust has to be earned” lesson was lost on me. I trusted Western Digital; even their own utility couldn’t fix the bad sectors. No one will ever read this. The myopic mass of corporate oligarchy that is this company would never allow it. YOU PEOPLE RUINED MY LIFE. And you don’t even care…
All drives will fail. Not “may” fail, but “will” fail.
That’s why they’re rated as MTBF, mean time between failures, i.e. the average time before it dies – some will die sooner, and some will last longer.
Since it will fail, sooner or later, it has always been recommended, by every manufacturer and data specialist, to not trust any important data that you “can’t afford” to lose, to any one drive.
If this data was so life-alteringly crucial to you, there was never anything stopping you from making multiple copies of it, was there?
I don’t quite understand how the drive failing is WD’s fault. There’s nothing they can do to make it not fail. They can make it last longer before it fails, but they already do that, and those drives cost more. But even the most expensive drive in the world, with the highest reliability rating, will fail somewhere down the road… it’s just a matter of when.
How did it fail? No power, no lights? Doesn’t show up in Computer? Loud consistently clicking noises? Grinding noises?
Mark Twain said “The man who sets out to carry a cat by the tail learns something that will always be useful and which never will grow dim or doubtful.” Next time don’t trust just one drive no matter who made it!
Maybe if you can describe the problems somebody can help you.
Joe
I’ve read many replies by Joe_S, none of which ever seem to be helpful at all. A poor company with poor employees.
My 500 GB My Book failed after about 3 years itself. I lost a lot of precious memories and the only thing that WD could suggest is that I try one of their recommended Data Recovery sources to see if I could gain any of the data back. Now, after calling several on the list, I was informed that Data Recovery is a GOLDMINE if you are on the Technician end of the situation. I paid approximately $150.00 US dollars for the HDD but it will cost me $700.00 US dollars to try and gain my data back…if I do the math…that does not equate to a good resolution. I understand that Data Recovery is quite technical and time consuming but that price is completely unreasonable if you ask me.
I understand the frustration PeterBergman is feeling. WD has graciously offered to replace my HDD but the memories I believe will be lost forever since I cannot afford to pay a recovery service $700 to try and bring back my photos and videos.
