Windows 7 Seeking Reliable Hard Drive with Long Warranty: WD30EZRX Insights

[seekermeister]

Another of my WDC drives is biting the dust (WD30EZRX)...not that it seems to matter what the model is, because I've now owned a number of WDC drives, and none of them has lasted through their warranty period. It seems to be becoming a vicious RMA circle. The drive that I'm now having to replace is only ~ 1.5 years old, and is already out of warranty, because the vendor that I purchased it from sold me old stock, which left very little warranty on it.

I'm only considering the drive listed in the title for one reason...a 5 year warranty, because I really don't need it's capacity or speed for holding one of my video archives. which is currently only about 2TB in size. While the length of the warranty is very important to me, I still want to avoid having to RMA any more than possible, because each time a drives goes down, I usually lose at least some of the videos on it.

I just read a comment elsewhere that the bigger the drive, the more likely it is for it to develop bad sectors, which in turn means speeding up that RMA circle. This gives me pause to consider, but then again I've not had any smaller WDC drives that impressed me as to their reliability either. Therefore I'm attempting to focus only on this one drive at the moment, to decide whether it is a wise decision to buy it or not?

Don't let my last statement discourage anyone from piping in with advise concerning a better drive to consider.

 

[Saltgrass]

I suppose we all have different experiences with Hard Drives, but WD are the ones I prefer. I have gotten a couple bad ones from arrival, but once they work, they seem to work for a while.

If you having problems with drives failing, perhaps make sure the drives have sufficient cooling air circulating around them. Personally I never stack two drives in close proximity, but that may not be completely necessary. There is also a fan blowing from the front of the case that moves air over the drives.

I do normally go for the "Caviar Black" models... And it seems a little strange the warranty would change prior to the unit having been used... I thought they asked for a purchase date when you acquired it, unless it was a refurb.

If you use a drive to do video streaming, they do have NAS drives that might last longer in that type of usage.

 

[seekermeister]

Yes, the ones that I've obtained usually work for "a while", but that while is not up to my expectation. With most any other appliances, you can generally expect that it will last at least as long as the warranty period, but I've found that to rarely be the case with hard drives.

As far as the operating environment that my drives are subject to, I do not believe that it is abnormal in any way. The operating temperature of the drive in question is currently at 36 degrees C, and that is while it is in the middle of an error scan test being done by HD Tune, which warms it up a bit. I'm only doing that scan to determine if there is enough space left on the drive to be of any use for other purposes, because WDC's DLG has already failed the unit with too many bad sectors.

I didn't say that the warranty had changed, but that WDC's identification of the model of the drive had. I just got a response from them about the procedure to use to request a warranty review, but that is a lost cause, because I don't have the documentation that they require. As far as the length of time of the warranty, I don't know if it would have been any better with the right model ID, because when I first bought it their registration showed it with a shortened warranty time, which is how I became aware that I was sold old stock.

However, all that is now history and I'm trying to deal with the present, so I'm refocusing on my original question regarding the WD4001FAEX specifically.

 

[seekermeister]

My question is now moot, because when I just checked again, the prices went way up. Before posting this thread this morning, both Newegg and TigerDirect had them for ~$190 + Shipping. I just checked again, and the prices are at ~$300. The only WDC 4TB drives in my price range are the red labels, but at only a 3 year warranty. Not sure I would be interested in them even at a 5 year warranty, because when I checked the reviews on them when they first came out, there was a lot of complaints about them arriving DOA.

Not sure what direction to go from here, because the only other drives in my size and price range are Seagate and Hatachi (shudder!).

EDIT: I just went back and checked my browser history, and apparently I still had too much sleep in my eyes this morning, because the offers I mentioned were for green labels, not black labels.

 

[BIGBEARJEDI]

"Hatachi"--funny typo there!

BBJ

 

[seekermeister]

HD Tune finally finished it's scan, and while it definitely isn't good, it's not as bad as I thought it may have been.
Now I have to try to figure the best way of dealing with the situation, until I get another drive? Three questions arise...first, since I have scanned the drive with both DLG and HD Tune, why hasn't the drive's firmware remapped the bad sectors yet? Secondly, how can I make it do so? Last but not least, since the number of sectors could be effecting a couple of dozen files, how can I determine precisely which files may have been effected, without having to manually
sort through 3000 files, selecting them one at a time to see if they will play to their completion?