Don't Buy WD Externals
I've had a 500gb WD "My Book Essential" for 13 months now, it's always worked like a dream until yesterday....
Drive died. No warning, no disk errors, gone from disk manager, just flashed and died....
Right about now I'm in panic mode. All my data is going to be gone!!!
Or...Maybe not?
I grabbed myself a screw driver, a pointy knife and started prying the case away...
To my surprise it only took about 10 minutes to get it off. At this point I take my 500gb drive out of the case, screw off the SATA->USB port on it and throw it in my computer...It works....
WHAT?!?! IT WORKS?!?!
I then throw a puny 160gb in the case, screw on the SATA->USB port and then....I noticed the problem. All of the capacitors in the SATA->USB port aren't actually in the board, they're all "glued" on there sides and hastily attached. One of them had "unglued" itself and was loosely hanging on to the board by 2 small soldered pins....
My advice to ANYONE thinking of buying a WD External as a secondary drive. Don't. It's not worth an extra 50$ or more for a hastily put together, heat generating case made by chinese ("made in china" sticker on the inside of the case) workers....
Drive died. No warning, no disk errors, gone from disk manager, just flashed and died....
Right about now I'm in panic mode. All my data is going to be gone!!!
Or...Maybe not?
I grabbed myself a screw driver, a pointy knife and started prying the case away...
To my surprise it only took about 10 minutes to get it off. At this point I take my 500gb drive out of the case, screw off the SATA->USB port on it and throw it in my computer...It works....
WHAT?!?! IT WORKS?!?!
I then throw a puny 160gb in the case, screw on the SATA->USB port and then....I noticed the problem. All of the capacitors in the SATA->USB port aren't actually in the board, they're all "glued" on there sides and hastily attached. One of them had "unglued" itself and was loosely hanging on to the board by 2 small soldered pins....
My advice to ANYONE thinking of buying a WD External as a secondary drive. Don't. It's not worth an extra 50$ or more for a hastily put together, heat generating case made by chinese ("made in china" sticker on the inside of the case) workers....
0
Comments
That or just get a cheap generic external case and buy a decent drive to put in it.
Thanks for the great responses