My Message to Western Digital

[sovereign]

Posted here, regarding the WD10TPVT 1TB 2.5" Drive:

http://community.wdc.com/t5/Other-Internal-Drives/Is-the-Model-WD10TPVT-1TB-2-5-quot-Drive-Available/m-p/11894/highlight/false#M122

Please join up over there and join in the chorus!

"WD:


We, the People, do NOT WANT this drive packaged in an enclosure soldered onto the board. We do not want it with difficult to remove proprietary firmware. We want this as a bare drive, so that we can install it in laptops and put in our own high performance OWC enclosures. This drive has been out for nearly 8 months, but is available no where! What gives? Really? And also, what we would really like to see is a Scorpio Black 640gb, 7200rpm drive. We know it is on the table, so when will it be available? 2.5 drive technology/distribution is really lagging. Not everyone wants ultra expensive, low capacity SSD drives."

 

[GoCubsGo]

Do you think that WD is going to take this at all seriously? "What gives? Really?" As a professional I simply can't take anything like that seriously. Next you then mention how you want to put their drive in a "high performance OWC drive". Honestly? This is how it reads:

Dear WD,
We want your 1TB 2.5" drive to be barebones. We don't care about your crappy enclosure because we found something better. We don't care what business decisions you've made because frankly we don't care. We'd also like to note that by "we" I mean "me" and I don't speak for the collective whole because I'm just a dude in his room on a Tuesday afternoon.


Perhaps remove the cockiness and state your wishes without saying that you'd like to put the drive in something better than they have to offer or that you think they should give you a barebones drive because you say so.

BTW, I do agree with you ... I'd love to see this drive come barebones.

 

[rdowns]

Sorry OP, we're way too busy bashing Apple to care about WD.

 

[sovereign]

Do you think that WD is going to take this at all seriously? "What gives? Really?" As a professional I simply can't take anything like that seriously. Next you then mention how you want to put their drive in a "high performance OWC drive". Honestly? This is how it reads:

Dear WD,
We want your 1TB 2.5" drive to be barebones. We don't care about your crappy enclosure because we found something better. We don't care what business decisions you've made because frankly we don't care. We'd also like to note that by "we" I mean "me" and I don't speak for the collective whole because I'm just a dude in his room on a Tuesday afternoon.


Perhaps remove the cockiness and state your wishes without saying that you'd like to put the drive in something better than they have to offer or that you think they should give you a barebones drive because you say so.

BTW, I do agree with you ... I'd love to see this drive come barebones.

If it was a couple months late perhaps I would not have been "cocky." But this is ridiculous. And I stand by my remarks about high performance, reliable enclosures with FW800. I have read several accounts of the WD My Book enclosures failing. I found this out after seeing one at the Apple store, and almost purchasing it. I'm glad I did not buy it on impulse at the time, because I researched it later and found out that the drives are soldered on, have difficult to remove firmware installed, and a high failure rate.

 

[MacDawg]

I doubt you are going to find too much outrage over this
There are other options available and quite frankly it isn't an important issue for most people

I support your "right" to voice your opinion to WD
But I seriously doubt it is going to get too much attention

 

[Jaro65]

I agree with Jessica. If you really would like to make your voice heard, I suggest you get yourself a book that teaches how to write a proper business letter. Your voice will carry much farther. 🙂

 

[pastrychef]

What enclosure is soldered to what board? Do you have a picture?

I saw from a link from sovereign's link that the drive is 12.5mm in height. I believe that MacBooks and MacBook Pros can only accommodate 9.5mm.

 

[dXTC]

I have read several accounts of the WD My Book enclosures failing. I found this out after seeing one at the Apple store, and almost purchasing it. I'm glad I did not buy it on impulse at the time, because I researched it later and found out that the drives are soldered on, have difficult to remove firmware installed, and a high failure rate.

Funny. I have a My Book Studio that had a hard drive fail recently, and decided to attempt a replacement of the drive, as I didn't want to pay for another FW800 enclosure/disk combo. The drive was not soldered on. Once I got the enclosure's shell open, removing the old drive was a snap.

I can't comment about the firmware, as mine was working fine without modification until the hard disk crash.

I can see where failure rates might be reduced by adding a small fan to the enclosure to dissipate heat, but that comes with a price: fan noise and slightly increased power consumption.

EDIT: Oh wait, nevermind. I just reread the OP and realized that this is about a 2.5" drive; mine was a 3.5". I fail.

 

[NIPRING]

What enclosure is soldered to what board? Do you have a picture?

I saw from a link from sovereign's link that the drive is 12.5mm in height. I believe that MacBooks and MacBook Pros can only accommodate 9.5mm.

The drives in the newest My Passport models have i/o boards that cant be removed from the drive(to make them even smaller) unlike the previous models that were a little longer but that interface board was easily unplugged to use the dive "elswhere".

 

[GoCubsGo]

If it was a couple months late perhaps I would not have been "cocky." But this is ridiculous. And I stand by my remarks about high performance, reliable enclosures with FW800. I have read several accounts of the WD My Book enclosures failing. I found this out after seeing one at the Apple store, and almost purchasing it. I'm glad I did not buy it on impulse at the time, because I researched it later and found out that the drives are soldered on, have difficult to remove firmware installed, and a high failure rate.

I agree with Jessica. If you really would like to make your voice heard, I suggest you get yourself a book that teaches how to write a proper business letter. Your voice will carry much farther. 🙂

^^^^ This was my point, just stated better.

You seriously need to re-think your tactics. You are cocky and really? They're under no orders to provide the drive barebones at all.

 

[pastrychef]

The drives in the newest My Passport models have i/o boards that cant be removed from the drive(to make them even smaller) unlike the previous models that were a little longer but that interface board was easily unplugged to use the dive "elswhere".

Ah! I see. Thanks for the clarification.

 

[NIPRING]

This video is how i found that out 😀
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ebMZogXA7U

 

[billib]

I don't understand whats so wrong about wanting an inexpensive standard SATA bare drive without impossible to uninstall crapware. If WD offered a 1 TB 2.5" Drive I would buy it in a heartbeat and drop that in the top slot of an 09' mini. Bottom HD 640 GB's + 1 TB on top = 1.64TB in an efin mini.
Wooooooooooh!!!!!!!!!!

 

[sovereign]

What enclosure is soldered to what board? Do you have a picture?

I saw from a link from sovereign's link that the drive is 12.5mm in height. I believe that MacBooks and MacBook Pros can only accommodate 9.5mm.

The new MBPs will fit 12.5mm drives.

ETA: "My Passport" not My Book...

 

[pastrychef]

The new MBPs will fit 12.5mm drives.

ETA: "My Passport" not My Book...

Estimated Time of Arrival???

Anyway, the bridge board is not soldered on to the drive. The entire controller board is modified to only sport a micro USB port instead of a SATA connector.