WD800JB, 80gb 8mb buffer drives, should I buy?

[paugie]

There's a deal offered me for the above, 2 of them. should I bite? What's to not like.

OTOH, what's to like?

I'm thinking they would make video editing a bit more responsive, I mean 3 drives, 1 boot, 1 capture, 1 intermediate files, (I have an 80gb samsung)

Thanks a lot.

 

[Buck]

They're nice drives Paugie. No, they don't include the latest platter density or FDB, but they have worked well for me.

 

[paugie]

Thanks Buck, does that mean they are old models? Hmmm. Not good, the person offering them made like they were new.

Well, probably new, as in unused, but old stock. That is discouraging.

Another question. Why is it that many of the people here "do not like" WD drives. Is this a recent thing. Meaning within the last two years WD quality has gone down?

 

[Mercutio]

I'm not sure quality was ever up.

 

[time]

Apart from developing bearing whine and having amazingly slow seek performance, they're just fine - if you ignore the people who have experienced an epidemic of failures.

In this land way down under, Seagate drives are about the same price as the WD offerings. Oh yeah, plus they're quieter, more reliable and probably at least as fast.

BTW, this might be the only area on SF where I disagree with Buck, and he has the advantage of greater volume of WD product. So he may well be right.

 

[Buck]

Believe me, I would never argue with someone like Mercutio who has had an unusually high volume of WD drives fail. To disagree with his personal experiences would demand that he is a liar, which would be very presumptuous on my part. Nonetheless, from my experiences, his example is unique, albeit worth considering as part of your hard drive purchasing decision.

Time is correct, WD drives have the tendancy to develop a whine after some time, as all ball bearing ATA drives seem to be plagued with. Yet, WD's is different, and normally louder.

As far as the drive being "old" -- first check the build date, next check the serial number. The drive should have a recent build date and not be recertified. If this is the case, it should be a single platter drive. These are the best.

 

[paugie]

Thank you, all. Great and speedy feedback.

 

[Mercutio]

Yeah, you RMA more WD drives in a year than you actually own, you get a little bit of an attidude. What can I say?

Oh, yes. I hope they rot in hell.

That's what you can say.

 

[Fushigi]

My WD experience is too dated to be relevant anymore. In the early 90s, WD drives were great, then they seemed to fall to the bottom of the barrel. Over the last few years, I couldn't say how well they're doing.

I have a WD 160GB and a (less than 2 month old) 320GB drive. Both work fine, but of course that doesn't mean anything about how reliable they'll be in the long run.

In addition to the WDs I mentioned, I've got a couple of Maxtors, a couple of Samsungs, and a Seagate SCSI. None have any problems. My only recent drive failure was just last week when the SCSI Atlas 10K II in my wife's PC decided to fail. But it was >5 years old and was run 24x7. I replaced it with a new 250GB Samsung as I wanted a largish drive with only 2 platters and the Samsung was available off-the-shelf at a decent price.

 

[P5-133XL]

I am finding my WD1200JB's and WD2500JB's are now starting to fail in large quantities (just outside thier warrentee period). I'm also finding that many of the drives bought from internet retailers are "outside their region" and not warrenteed in the US: Grrrr

With time, I'm getting more and more down on WD drives.

 

[Bozo]

I've bought a lot of the 'JB' series drives over the last few years. But recently I started buying Seagate and Hitachi. Why? Too many RMAs with the WDs.
Now I replace them when they are about 3 years old, even if they are still running and not showing any signs of problems. Most of these have been running 24/7.
Percentage wise, I have RMA'd more Seagate Cheetahs though.

Bozo :mrgrn: