WTF is it with Western Digital laptop hard drives?
My laptop came with a 120gb Caviar HD.  This drive has and is running fine.
A months ago I bought a WD Caviar 320gb drive to replace the 120gb drive.
I got it partitioned it and got it running.  That drive lasted six weeks.  Fired up the laptop and heard the telltale "click of death".  Well that sucked.  The 120gb drive went back into the laptop.  Since it runs fine, I left it there.
Western digital has a good website.  I ran the SN, sent the 320gb drive back.  In about three weeks I got a new 400gb drive.


Well that was neat.  I got an extra 60 gigs of space for my trouble.
I bought a USB drive enclosure and used the replacement drive to backup my computer and my wife's computer.  I plug it in to update or transfer data, download programs and files etc once every one or two weeks.  Should last for years right?  Wrong.
It ran good for a few months.  Used it last night to DL Mint 8, Mint 8 x64 and Virtual Box.  No issues.  Plugged it in tonight and the now infamous "Click of Death" is coming from the drive again.  250gb of data is probably gone.  
Ran the SN and it's still under warranty.  It will be going back to WD on Monday.  This makes the third Western Digital drive I've had crash.  One in my desktop a few years ago and now two crashes of laptop drives in less than a year.
The 120gb drive is still running fine, but I'm now officially swearing off Western Digital.  
As soon as I can, I'm replacing the 120gb and whatever drive WD sends back with Seagate drives.  The WD drives will sit in a drawer as a very last resort.  I don't trust them.  






I might use them in an experiment to see what happens when a Barnes 180gr TSX from a 300 Weatherby impacts a laptop hard drive at various distances.
Just venting.  
ZM
 


 


 

IMO - the bigger they are, they hotter they run and faster they fail.   Just go to CNET and read the reviews.  Larger ones just seem to cook faster.

I got the smallest one I could get (320) a while back and haven't run it but 5-6 times.

Bottom line - no space in the case for cooling.

Imagine having a terabyte back up and then fry - ouch!

It's irritating that on the second time around with the drive in an external enclosure, it failed again.



It sat unplugged most of the time.  Grumble, grumble piss and moan.



I'm going to stick it in the freezer today and see if I can recover any of the data on it.

I have an old external drive and an old Dell Dimension desktop that are used for backing up data.  That makes three backup places.  



I mean what are the chances of all three back ups crashing at the same time?
......I hear Murphy coming now.