So, I can understand your frustration but, 4 discs out of how many thousands they make every day? That's not that conclusive. That said, iirc the reviews about a year ago did say that this was a very consumer drive. I don't remember hearing them break but... On Sep 3, 2011 4:30 PM, "Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton" < luke.leigh...@gmail.com> wrote: > > just a word of warning: on absolutely no account, not for any reason, > should you buy WD "Green" drives. > > i've just spent a hair-raising 6 weeks discovering that these drives, > when pushed above a mere 40 Centigrade, become so unstable that they > can actually become completely unresponsive, shut down, and leave the > linux kernel in a completely unstable state, especially if they are > part of a RAID1 mirror. > > it merely takes something such as .... ooo, copying the data? or... > shock, horror, writing a file, to raise the temperatures enough to > cause them to become unstable. and as for actually doing a RAID check > or a RAID1 re-join - well, you know how normally the mdadm mismatch > count is supposed to be zero? well, by the time the re-build is > complete, the mismatch count is up to 170,000. > > now, you may be thinking "surely, that was just unlucky with two > drives, right?" wrong - the total number of drives used for this RAID1 > mirror was *four* drives [cf: earlier very helpful discussion > involving a script which someone published - thanks! - that detected > partly-complete RAID mirrors] > > so, whilst most people are finding that these drives are "great", the > reality is that they are only "fantastic" if you don't actually use > them. the moment you try to do a backup of them (for example if > they're failing) then it is too late: you will be absolutely > guaranteed to have lost all the data. > > according to the mdadm mismatch count as a standard heuristic / > guideline to determine whether drives should be replaced, strictly > speaking, these drives are already end-of-life. but being sold as > new. > > now, apparently, what Western Digital do is they test new drives > thoroughly, and if they pass with flying colours, they are labelled > "black" and sold for more money. if they fail, then they're > "re-programmed" to run a bit slower, thus making less noise, use less > power, and can therefore justify being sold with a "green" label. >
Source? > unfortunately what that means is that Western Digital are knowingly > selling faulty drives, *knowingly* trying to pass off > unfit-for-purpose drives as "new". > BTW, Intel and AMD (and probably every other chip maker) does the same. Why not do it with discs. > if you have purchased WD "Elements" or any other "Green" Drives, you > should perform a SLOW backup, ensuring that the temperature never goes > above 38C in the process, and return them as "unfit for purpose" to > wherever you bought them from. > > by contrast, hitachi's 1.5tb drives which were £70 each off of ebuyer > (instead of £55 for the WD Elements including the external USB case) > run consistently at a full FOUR degrees centigrade lower temperature, > even when the WD Green Drive was removed from its USB case and placed > into the exact same server in which the hitachi drive was present. > I'm sure I can find someone saying the exact opposite about WD vs Hitachi if you look. It just depends on how many discs you run into. > four identical WD Elements drives - all of them completely unfit for > purpose. that's not an accident, and i am not the only person who has > experienced difficulties with these drives (different batch, different > supplier). BTW I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm saying you're not right :) If you had 10+ desktops with discs you kept needing to rma, I might see your point. But just 4 of the cheapest discs out there (unknown fs, no bench / profile data, kernel version, etc) and minimal troubleshooting data is very inconclusive to me. So come again. Do not buy, why?
