Who said Western Digital drives were unreliable?

CougTek

Hairy Aussie
Joined
Jan 21, 2002
Messages
8,729
Location
Québec, Québec
A Western Digital drive (WD400JB) was sitting in my previous main system. Previous, yep... Because of FAH, I overclocked it a little too high, I suppose, until four days ago when it started to freeze every now and then. I then tried to lower the frequency of the CPU, but apparently, the processor unit had greatly deteriorate lately and the instability problems weren't for nothing. I tried to enter the BIOS upon reboot, but it froze even there. I then reset the CMOS, but even then, the computer didn't stay usable long enough to go into the BIOS and put the CPU frequency to its default setting. I played like that with the annoying box for half an hour until, well, you know me...

I smashed the cover, pulled all the wires I could grab without any kind of care, brought the box outdoor in the snow behind my car, opened the trunk, grab my axe and joyfully smashed the blade five or six times through the chassis. Then, out of habit, I through it in the trunk of my car like I do all the times I pass someo...something to the axe. The box sat there for three days, with temperature dropping to below -20C every night. Then yesterday, I decided to check what happened to the hard drive since I found I was missing a few files on it to make the replacing system usable (like motherboard drivers to make the onboard LAN work and which I've lost the CD).

Although I hit the drive cage directly with the blade of my beloved tool, the drive wasn't too damaged. Just a little scar on the side. I think the cage bent and the drive twisted instead of eating the blade right on the side. The cover was also a bit bumped, but it wasn't so much as to declare the drive a complete lost on sight. I let the drive de-freeze for several hours and then put it inside my other, yet-to-piss-me computer. Oh surprise, it's working just fine!

Sure, I've quickly cut and pasted all my important files on another hard drive (I have a backup, but since I've moved recently, it's sitting into an unidentified box and I'm not in the mood to search for it) and I won't be saving anything dear to my hear on it, but the freaking drive survived both an axe blow and three freezing nights outdoor. Wow.

Who said Western Digital drives were unreliable?
 

Buck

Storage? I am Storage!
Joined
Feb 22, 2002
Messages
4,514
Location
Blurry.
Website
www.hlmcompany.com
I see you visited your psychiatirst, Mr. Axe. It seems that he's in good shape and your session was successful. Oh, and I'm surprised that the drive survived, I've heard about and seen similar situations (without the axe) where a WD drive survived a catastrophic event.
 

mubs

Storage? I am Storage!
Joined
Nov 22, 2002
Messages
4,908
Location
Somewhere in time.
Glad your drive survived, Coug.

The next time you get angry with your system, do me a favor. Ship the system to me (I'll pay shipping).
 

Mercutio

Fatwah on Western Digital
Joined
Jan 17, 2002
Messages
22,303
Location
I am omnipresent
I can soooooooo see a Western Digital drive wanting to get beaten up like that. Probably turns it on. And it was asking for it anyway, wearing its master/slave jumper like that.
 

MaxBurn

Storage Is My Life
Joined
Jan 20, 2004
Messages
3,245
Location
SC
I went midevil on a Canon s400 about two years ago. Snapped the parts back together and threw away the little plastic bits and springs on the floor and the printer actually worked better. Even if the thing was trash I would have felt better due to the percussion therapy / maintenance.

Office space reference: Printer in the field, baseball bat, gangsta scene etc...
 

ddrueding

Fixture
Joined
Feb 4, 2002
Messages
19,747
Location
Horsens, Denmark
Mercutio said:
I can soooooooo see a Western Digital drive wanting to get beaten up like that. Probably turns it on. And it was asking for it anyway, wearing its master/slave jumper like that.

Should have seen how long the drive would run "topless" ;)
 

Handruin

Administrator
Joined
Jan 13, 2002
Messages
13,931
Location
USA
I've done that before. Years ago I took apart an old 540 MB drive. I took the top off and connected it to a machine. I proceeded to install DOS 6.2 on it. While DOS was installing, I stuck my finger on the spinning platter to stop the rotation. The drive slowed, and then spun back up to speed. The install reported some access error, but asked to abort, retry, fail, so I said retry. The drive continued and I proceeded to finish the install of DOS without any problems. I eventually trashed the drive, so I can't say if it would still work.
 

Santilli

Hairy Aussie
Joined
Jan 27, 2002
Messages
5,285
If you want to see a drive die, ship to me, and I'll give it a 375 H&H death.
:mrgrn:
Photos will be included.

s
:mrgrn: :eekers:
 

Fushigi

Storage Is My Life
Joined
Jan 23, 2002
Messages
2,890
Location
Illinois, USA
MaxBurn said:
Office space reference: Printer in the field, baseball bat, gangsta scene etc...
I think you're due for a re-watch. It was the dreaded fax machine that Mr. Bolton always had problems with.
 

Mercutio

Fatwah on Western Digital
Joined
Jan 17, 2002
Messages
22,303
Location
I am omnipresent
It SAYS it's a fax machine in those scripts, but it looks a lot more like an early HP laserjet, and "PC Load Letter" is an early laserjet (III?) error code.
 
Top