[Ham-Computers] RE: From K3ASI

[Hsu, Aaron]

I don't think you're doing anything "wrong".  Sounds more like a bad batch
of drives.

Many years ago, before the HD price wars (when drive prices were *MUCH*
higher), quality control was top notch and drive failure percentages were
very low.  Companies like WD and Quantum emphasized the fact that they had
lowest RMA (product returns) rates in the industry and even added 2 or 3
year standard warranties on their drives.

But, alas, the drive price wars started and the first thing to go was QC,
especially on inexpensive IDE drives.  RMA numbers went up in line with QC
cost cutting.  It's amazing that any HD company can still make $$$ based on
drive prices these days.  HD's now are more of a "commodity" item rather
than a specialized good and it's basically "just pump out as many as we can
to keep up".  "We'll just replace the 10% that go bad after-the-fact".  The
current trend in the past year is to scale back on the warranties on the
lowest-end drives - most now only have a 1 year warranty.

IBM and Fujitsu were very well known for their product reliability until the
past year or so.  IBM had problems with their "75GXP" series of drives and
never admitted it (there's a class action lawsuit in the works).  Fujitsu
recalled some of their drives recently due to a manufacturing problem of a
3rd party part (an IC chip).  No one is immune these days due to cost
cutting.  We, the consumers, benefit by seeing lower prices, but we also
expose ourselves to seeing more defective products on store shelves.

I was (and still am) a big supporter of Western Digital (since when they
were just a HD controller manufacturer).  You didn't mention if the other
drive with the same problem is a second drive or one that this replaced.
Best thing to do is to contact WD and have them replace the drive under
warranty.  If you visit their website, http://www.wdc.com, download their
"Data Life Guard" utility and run it.  It will tell you if the drive needs
to be replaced or not (WD might ask for a diag code from this util when you
call them).  Make sure you backup all your data first before running any
diagnostics!

GL & 73,

  - Aaron Hsu, NN6O (ex-KD6DAE)
    {nn6o}@arrl.net
    {athsu}@unistudios.com
    No-QRO Int'l #1,000,006
    . -..- - .-. .-   ".... . .- ...- -.--"
 


-----Original Message-----
From: k3asi [mailto:k3asi@bellsouth.net]
Sent: Monday, May 05, 2003 4:37 AM

My WD 40 gig  hard drive started making a clicking noise and some times 
it boots and other times it says the HD can't be found. I took out the 
HD and had it laying upside down looking at it and it seems to be 
working again as long as I keep it in this position. I bought this drive 
six months ago. This is the second drive that has given me the same 
problems, what am I doing wrong?
Running Win98, FAT 32, partitioned for drive C:/ only, 550 mhz computer.
Thanks, Dave, K3ASI