WD My Book Essential Crashed - a sad story

[m-jeri]

^^

Get the 2TB Seagte LP ones only. nothing else.

 

[thatguy]

@Mech. If you are buying a new one, my advice would be to buy the enclosure and the hard drive separately. The molded external drives sold by big companies are a scam. The manufacturers use lower quality components and the warranty periods are are lesser (1/2 year for external drives vs 3/5 years for internal). In case of failure the warranty becomes void if you open the case. You can't recover data even if only the USB electronics dies.

For my home I buy 1TB WD Caviar greens (got 7 of them). They are cheap (~2700) and do the job as data dumps.

Besides, if you have just one copy of your data, you are walking on thin ice.

Edit:
Western Digital does not even publish the detailed specification sheet for the external drives. You have very little idea of the quality of hardware. You can get the drive specs for internal drives from

http://www.wdc.com/en/library/library.aspx?t=2

 

[theironhorse]

here i am adding the updated price list in excel file please check.. updated 4th feb,2011

 

[theironhorse]

@Mech. If you are buying a new one, my advice would be to buy the enclosure and the hard drive separately. The molded external drives sold by big companies are a scam. The manufacturers use lower quality components and the warranty periods are are lesser (1/2 year for external drives vs 3/5 years for internal). In case of failure the warranty becomes void if you open the case. You can't recover data even if only the USB electronics dies.

For my home I buy 1TB WD Caviar greens (got 7 of them). They are cheap (~2700) and do the job as data dumps.

Besides, if you have just one copy of your data, you are walking on thin ice.

Edit:
Western Digital does not even publish the detailed specification sheet for the external drives. You have very little idea of the quality of hardware. You can get the drive specs for internal drives from

Document Library

what you said is partially correct.. however the casing you buy have a warranty of only 6 months and cheap chinese make.. also i am not just telling like that i made seagate replace 5 drives.. but i realised that the casing got faulty.. and after 2 years another casing did the same stuff.. also the casing available in the market are with diff power supply rating and that might not be exactly precise as per the HDD..

another point is external hdd that are coming with 3 years warranty that is true.. but WD have been giving 3 years since ages.. its just seagate started now...


also the external casing available in market most of em are able to handle 500gb quite well and after that most of them start creating problems like bad sector and unable to format and multiple issues... this is just my experience ..m not pointing out at anyone..

i used to think the same way before i enountered issues with cases available and i am that much sure that i've had a lot more pc trouble experience than i normal guy.. i have troubleshooted issues for 3 long years.. lol and still doin...

 

[thatguy]

another point is external hdd that are coming with 3 years warranty that is true.. but WD have been giving 3 years since ages.. its just seagate started now...

Here is the warranty data of top 5 external drives (taken from Amazon):

Western Digital WD Elements 1 TB - 1 Year
Western Digital My Passport Essential SE 1 TB - 2 year
Seagate Expansion 500 GB - 2 year
Toshiba Canvio Plus 320 - N/A
Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex 1 TB - 2 years

I am not sure if they offer better warranty in India. I would be really surprised if you got a 3 year warranty on an external drive in India. The shop attendants in Croma say it is one year. Never verified it with the WD or Seagate.

however the casing you buy have a warranty of only 6 months and cheap chinese make

Agreed. May be it is just me, but I am worried more about data/drive than the case. Buying an internal drive gives me longer warranty. Not to mention the ability to plug it into a SATA port without voiding warranty.


In any case, I can't reemphasize the importance of keeping redundant copies of data. Having just one copy, no matter how good the hard drive is, is a bad idea.

 

[theironhorse]

cosidering the fact that i have 3500 odd movies .. i really cant make another copy of them as it will take another cpl of tb's for me to save them...

so depends on our choice.. however i do appreciate the effort of having a copy.. but probably out of my hands.. i would rather make them into dvds and save.

 

[mechmohra]

Hi,

I decided to go with Seagate 1TB, but I am based in chennai. where can i get this in chennai only ritchie street or any other store available. I havent bought much electronic items in chennai. So please guide me.

 

[snorkel4u]

I've recently purchased a 1TB seagate goFlex for 5400.
There're websites on the internet which are giving away the 500GB GoFlex for as low as 2600 and 1TB Go Flex for 5400 (using some coupon codes...obviously). When I asked my retailer for the warranty he, like the croma guys, also confirmed only one year.

Plus, I agree with thatguy, since earlier I bought a Seagate 1 TB Expansion HDD, which worked like a charm until one day it stopped working in windows and just got recognized in mac

I just couldnt understand that problem was causing it. All I could remember was that I once connected it to the Mac. Thats it. May be the file system got screwed. Plus since it was bought in the US, I never got any support for it in India..:sad:

I didnt wanna format it so now have given it to a friend who has a mac and he is now moving all the data to the newer 1TB. Who wanted the loss of soo many movies.

hence, I would go ahead with the idea of having Multiple internal SATA hard drives which more nos of years as a warranty than the external ones which are just USB.


I would suggest buying one of these HDD Docking stations which are really cool and work as an Active hub for docking ur SATAs.

Thermaltakeusa??Storage??Docking Station

 

[hemantwaghe]

Here is the warranty data of top 5 external drives (taken from Amazon):

Western Digital WD Elements 1 TB - 1 Year
Western Digital My Passport Essential SE 1 TB - 2 year
Seagate Expansion 500 GB - 2 year
Toshiba Canvio Plus 320 - N/A
Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex 1 TB - 2 years

I am not sure if they offer better warranty in India. I would be really surprised if you got a 3 year warranty on an external drive in India. The shop attendants in Croma say it is one year. Never verified it with the WD or Seagate.



Agreed. May be it is just me, but I am worried more about data/drive than the case. Buying an internal drive gives me longer warranty. Not to mention the ability to plug it into a SATA port without voiding warranty.


In any case, I can't reemphasize the importance of keeping redundant copies of data. Having just one copy, no matter how good the hard drive is, is a bad idea.

I bought a segate 1 TB year and half back which had 5 years warentee .Lemme see If I can locate receipt.
It had same version with 3 year warentee some 250-400 Rs cheaper.

So these warenteefigures seems too low.

See the screenshot from segate warentee page -3 and half years warentee remaining!



Uploaded with ImageShack.us

 

[mechmohra]

Hi,

I bought Seagate 1TB Goflex from supreme computers in Ritchie street for Rs.3700/- . First, I went to Chroma, to my surprise the price was tagged as Rs.4500 and then to Reliance, no difference same price. then finally got it from Supreme computers.

 

[snorkel4u]

@ Mech, I guess you're talking about the GoFlex internal 1 TB?

 

[mechmohra]

Nope, I was talking about this Desktop hard drive | External Desktop hard drives | FreeAgent | GoFlex Desk | Seagate

 

[midnitefreakin]

@mechmohra: did u try to recover aby data on ur drive? why don't u try it with a mac or linux os? samething happnd with me and my friend. Though I had to replace the drive but my friend was able to get it detected on a linux system and took the backup.


Try formatting it on some other os then there r reliable data recovery sw which recovers a lot of files even after formatting. Get data back is one which my friend had used.

did u try formatting it in dos mode? even that could be a good idea. Google it!