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Western Digital sucks!

ClintonHammond

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Oct 31, 2006
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O.k... so I'm kicking though Costco the other day.... and something jumps off the shelf at me that LOOKS like a dream-come-true

Western Digital Passport 160G USB External Storage

It even LOOKS like McCoy Pauley (10 points for getting the reference!)

I'm stoked.... I nab it and run home... and lemme tell you, it's going RIGHT back to Costco! It's a great idea, but man oh man, their proprietary software sucks monkey sack! It crashed 3 times just trying to install the software to recognize it.... When it did connect, and I'd copied some files to it, there was no way to REMOVE the files from it.... (Save for having to delete whole folders, one file at a time)

So the glossy black cover aside, it's gone.

Luckily Maxtor has a similar product already out. (also 160 gigs.... 20 bucks more and a different exterior) When you plug IT in, Windows Explorer recognizes it as just another external drive and you can drag-and-drop in both directions with impunity!

So a Gold Star for Maxtor (Been using their products for a couple of years now)
and a failing grade in all counts except appearance for Western Digital.

Too bad, cause I donno about anyone else, but when faced with 2 pieces of kit that perform the same, and cost about the same, I'll ALWAYS buy the one that looks cooler!

Not this time.
 
It may not suck quite as bad as you think.

The software is intended to keep a set of files synchronized between the drive and your PC - hence the trouble removing stuff. The folders you drag onto the drive will be kept synched to your PC everytime you connect it. That doesn't appear to be what you want.

Uninstall their stupid software and try just accessing the drive as is. It should work, because (according to WD) the software installs from the drive. To do that, Windows has to recognize it as a drive. You should be able to just plug it in, kill the stupid installer, and use it as a normal drive.

I find that the drives themselves from WD are worlds better than Maxtor. The maintenance contractor where I work is allowed to install used drives. I get to reimage the machines after the drives are put in. If we get a Maxtor, odds are very good that it has bad sectors no matter how new it is. If we get WD, then the odds are very good that it is in perfect shape - no matter how many hours of service it has. Also, most of the drives that croak and have to be replaced are Maxtor. We've got servers that had Maxtors originally. Bunches of those drives quit within weeks of being put into service. The replacements were also Maxtor, and they quit just as quick. Dell got tired of replacing the crappy things (guarantee replacement costs THEM) and switched to WD. Not a single WD has quit.

I don't like Maxtor at ALL.

I check the drives with Smart monitoring tools.
 
"You should be able to just plug it in, kill the stupid installer, and use it as a normal drive."

Nope... couldn't be done.. without their stupid software, the 'drive' wasn't recognized at all...

And well, it's too late... The WD POS has already been returned, and the Maxtor is on it's way....
 
Fryes had Seagate 400GB external Firewire/USB 2.0 external drives on salefor $120 USD, so I bought one. It comes with a one-button backup software, which I did NOT install. Just use plug-and-play Firewire, and it works great.

I think I've got about one terrabyte of portable storage for digital video projects. Never had too much problems, except for a few times where the host computer occasionally "loses" the Firewire drive during a long video capture. It never actually lost any video, just couldn't find the drive afterwards without a reboot, where (thankfully) everything had ended up on the drive.

Beanbag
 
One part of my job is to send back DOA or defective hard drives to their respective manufacturers for replacement under warranty. This amounts to hundreds of drives per week.

WD is, in my experience, by far the most unreliable vendor in terms of fulfilling their warranty. They lose drives, claim to have shipped drives and provide tracking numbers that never have any activity, and often will decide to void a warranty apparently on a whim. Just this week they sent back a 120GB notebook drive that had never even been used - it got no power upon its initial installation. They sent it back, saying it was "missing USB housing" -- WTF? There was no "USB housing" - this was a standard 2.5" notebook drive out of a box of 50 just like it purchased directly from WD.

I tried to resubmit the RMA, and guess what - "Warranty Void".

And naturally, trying to resolve situations like this with them is about as worthwhile as giving dance lessons to a corpse.

In my experience, the easiest vendor to deal with (at least where warranty returns are concerned) is Toshiba, with Seagate being a close second. We don't deal with Maxtor, so I have no idea about them.

I know there's not necessarily any correlation between product quality and customer service quality, but my experiences in dealing with WD makes me very wary of ever buying their products for my personal use.
 
ClintonHammond said:
"You should be able to just plug it in, kill the stupid installer, and use it as a normal drive."

Nope... couldn't be done.. without their stupid software, the 'drive' wasn't recognized at all...

And well, it's too late... The WD POS has already been returned, and the Maxtor is on it's way....
Click to expand...

Worked for me.

In fact, I've bought it for 5 customers, all of whom love it.
 
"Seagate being a close second. We don't deal with Maxtor"
Maxtor IS Seagate.

"dealing with WD makes me very wary"
Well, I know I'll never buy another thing with their name on it.
 
I would be a little leery of using the USB as the powersource for an external drive. I'll take a plug in instead.

I have 5 WD drives (3 year old much used 120 Gb IDE, 3 two year old 250 GB's and 1 six month old external 500 Gb Mybook). Haven't had a problem yet...
 
You're sucking a lot of power through a dinky little cord. Not all USB interfaces can provide enough power. Laptops are particularly bad for USB-powered devices.

Beanbag
 
ClintonHammond said:
"I would be a little leery of using the USB as the powersource for an external drive"
Why?
Click to expand...

USB is specified to provide 500mA of current, maximum. A hard drive can easily pull more than that during spin up.

If your USB port can't supply enough current (most can do so for a short time) for the drive during spin-up, you might have problems with the drive being recognized.

There is also the (slight) possibility that drawing more than 500mA will kill your USB port. C'T (a German computer magazine, very technical and thorough folks) says that they've never yet encountered a dead USB port confirmed killed by a USB powered HD, but that it is possible.
 
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