It must be time to short Western Digital

I don’t think I’ve ever had such a bad rash of drive failures. 4 drives out of the last 8 I’ve bought from Western Digital have failed, all 3 of them with the same failure. Two years ago I bought 5 drives and of those, 3 failed sooner or later with what can only be described as “random head parking”.

A loud click tells you you are done for, and then the operating system—doesn’t matter which, both Windows and FreeBSD have succumbed to this beast of an issue—can’t go on and gives up.

I’ve replaced one under warranty so far, and just gone through a 24 hour plus ordeal getting my primary development and writing machine back up and running thanks to another boot drive which has gone.

The fourth drive just died, with different symptoms. It was a newer 80GB model no less.

4 of 5 EIDE drives failing is too many. I won’t be buying another WDC anytime soon.