Long story short.
I bought a Western Digital My Book Pro 500GB drive 6 months ago as a backup drive. It worked great.
Two days ago I bought another Western Digital My Book Premium 320GB to backup the most crucial data on the WD 500GB.
As per Western Digital's web site, I downloaded the latest firmware upgrade from the WD site for both drives in an effort to daisy-chain the 2 NEW drives.
The 320 worked but when I plugged in the 500GB for only the second time since I bought it, the firmware upgrade failed and the drive is now dead!
Spent 3-4 hours trouble shooting and on the phone with Westen Digital and all they offer is a refurb replacement drive.
Data recovery for the 500GB drive starts at $400 just to look at it and up to $1,900!
I know that any and every drive has the potential to fail - my main beef is that Western Digital's firmware upgrade was aborted and made my 500GB drive unusable!
And here's 233 more comments about the fact that Western Digital is aware of this and other issues but really does not care: Western Digital Sucks!
That's Wrong!
HMK
Posts
I just bought one of these, and now I'm awfully nervous. I had problems with it out of the box. It said that it was plug and play compatible with Windows or OSX. I started moving files onto it, and wackiness ensued. I reformatted the drive, and it appeared to work fine until I attempted to remotely connect to it.
ReplyDeleteI can view the file names and data, but I can't actually access the files. Didn't have this issue with any previous drives.
I was considering buying a second (to back up the first) but I'm too wary, I'll probably go with another brand now.
Beth, I'd back up whatever you have on another drive.
ReplyDeleteEveryone is advising having two back ups of everything, which is exactly what I was attempting to do when the firmware update screwed up my 500GB drive and thus, my world for the moment...
Good luck!
HMK
Yeah sure it sucks Maxtor are better I use it for heavy torrenting for months and never have any problem with t.
ReplyDeleteAnd I have a seagate sucks as a slave drive just died one month ago.
and a WD Scorpio 120GB USB Drive sucks up everytime you try to copy something to or from it, or multiple files then it pop up the old classic window error message says "Window Delayed Write Failed"
Don't ever go for WD or Seagate they sucks.
What they care are Cash in their pocket like norton
I bought a 1TB drive in May, worked fine until yesterday when it just wouldn't turn on.
ReplyDeleteTo pay $400- $2500 for data recovery and then ship it back to be given REFURBISHED drive is ridiculous. Besides, I don't want a Western Digital product ever again.
I think I'll find a cheaper data recovery place then buy a Maxtor. It will be cheaper in the long run.
I got a WD 500GB that just broke. I lost all my datas and there is nothing I can do to retrieve my files because everything is corupted now. Do not count on a single technology to keep you datas safe because none is eternal. Back your stuffs on multiple medias (CD, DVD, Flash), but not only one.
ReplyDeletePersonal computer products have always had high failure rates. I figure that I have had to return almost 25% of all computers, drives, motherboards, mice, keyboards, monitors, etc that I have bought in the last 25 years. You would think by now things would be improving but they're not. For your important data you cannot have too many backups, on multiple media. If you depend on one external HD for backup you WILL lose data at some point. I guess the manufacturers figure they can build junk since it will be obsolete in a few years. Same with cell phones.
ReplyDeleteI have a 1 Terabyte western digital My Book Ext hard drive. I have just noted a problem deleting 1 particular file,
ReplyDeleteWhen I try to rename or delete the file it says that that folder does not exist.
Yet when I access the files in that folder they open and function fine.
The folder is fully open to the system, not hidden or read only.
So it's not me!
I scanned with check disc and it came up with no errors (which took all day for 1 Terabyte)
I have one of those WD 500 GB drives - I won't trust it with a single important piece of data.
ReplyDeleteBut...so far, it hasn't pooched yet.
So far...
I recently had the worst experience with the stupid WDMyPassport external hard drives! I had backed up all my files on my boyfriends 500GB WD and I bought a 1TB WD on Christmas and used it for about 2 weeks and backed up everything there as well. My boyfriends hard died and we didnt mind because he didn't have anything important and I still had all my files on my hard and my laptop...and then the impposible happened. My laptop overheated and went dead as I was rendering a 3d model and I took it immediately to be formatted having in mind I have my whole backup on my brand new hard. In a matter of hours, just as my laptop was formatted, my hard died for no reason at all!! I now have lost everything, every piece of data from my whole life! Btw I just finished Architecture school and everything I have worked on in 5 sleepless yrs - gone! Pictures - gone! Everything - gone! I didn't apply for masters because I don't have a portfolio and three extractions didn't manage to recover anything! My life has been ruined by WD!!!!
ReplyDeleteWow, ouch! I feel you pain. Unfortunately we are only two of the thousands that had to find out the hard way just how sucky WD truly are. My new MacBook Air is scheduled to arrive in the next couple of days and even though I know everything one cares about and wants to save should be backed up in at least 3 places (on a couple of reliable drives like Other World Computing as well as the cloud and places like DropBox) I do find some comfort knowing that SSD drives are finally here replacing the archaic spinning drives. Best news is SSD prices are coming down and hopefully everything I still have archived on my HDDs will be there when I'm ready to backup an all SSD Archive. Good luck!
ReplyDeleteI have owned 5 WD drives. Every single one of them has failed. 100% failure rate within warentee. Each experience has been different and equally as frustrating and painful. It's not worth the $20 you might save when shopping for drives. I will never buy another WD product. I've had 2 WD drives that were sent to me broken... but new. During one of the customer service experiences, they sent the replacement drive to an incorrect address. When I called upset that my drive wasn't delivered in over 9 days, they apologized for sending it to the wrong state, and over nighted it. They goofed up the overnight order. Taking 2 days to approve the overnight. I had a back up drive that went dead. Tech support gave me the wrong advice and managed to hurt the drive even more. I can go on and on about how bad they are. I just don't have the time. Never, never buy WD drives. It's not worth it.
ReplyDelete