Don't Buy WD Externals

MrTRiotMrTRiot Northern Ontario Icrontian
edited January 2010 in Hardware
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....

Comments

  • ardichokeardichoke Icrontian
    edited January 2010
    Seagate FreeAgent drives ftw!

    That or just get a cheap generic external case and buy a decent drive to put in it.
  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited January 2010
    One time my mom's old Ford broke down, so you should definitely never buy Ford again, too.
  • MAGICMAGIC Doot Doot Furniture City, Michigan Icrontian
    edited January 2010
    Yeah, and i dropped my Blackberry today, so you should definitely stay away from Blackberries.
  • MrTRiotMrTRiot Northern Ontario Icrontian
    edited January 2010
    @MAGIC & Thrax

    Thanks for the great responses :p
  • VicarVicar Icrontian
    edited January 2010
    Touche:)
  • _k_k P-Town, Texas Icrontian
    edited January 2010
    I broke my ankle after only owning it for 15 years, stay away from those things.
  • Cliff_ForsterCliff_Forster Icrontian
    edited January 2010
    As a side note, and I'm being serious, I dropped a Seagate free agent external, one of the 7200 RPM jobs, kind of bulky with an external power source, and I am pleased to say, it lives. It hit hard, I thought it was a goner at first.
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