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The dreaded WD External HD Click Of Dooooom!

dXTC

dXTC

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Oct 30, 2006
2,033
50
Up, up in my studio, studio
Click.
Click.
Click.

...I'm sure many of you have witnessed it, and tonight, so have I. My WD external just bit the dust, after slightly over 2 years.

This sucks.

It could be worse, I guess-- it could have been my iMac's internal that keeled over. The only things I "lost" were some m4v's I Handbraked from my collection for my nano, and I can re-Handbrake the ones that aren't on my nano. I also lost some music projects I was working on that were on the Windows partition, but for the most part I can recover them from elsewhere. (My Time Machine files are gone, of course, but I never really used it to recover anything-- it was just for peace of mind.)

Two questions:
1. My AppleCare doesn't cover attached peripherals, and the WD is past its own warranty period. Do you think it's worth attempting to take the drive out and attempting to recover using another machine?
2. Obviously, I'm picking up a replacement this weekend. Any under-$200 suggestions? (One other stipulation: Must have FW800.)

Answers, opinions, snarky comments- they're all welcome...
 
1. Probably not.

2. Maybe you could open it up and reuse the enclosure. That's what I'm doing with my old 500GB MyBook.

I have a pair of Buffalo DriveStation Combo 4's that are quite good. They are quiet when not spinning and fairly quick on FW800. THey run about $140 for the 1TB AFAIK.
 
In spite our your woes... I still recommend WD

I have the 1 TB WD MyBook and I have had no issues at all

Woof, Woof - Dawg
pawprint.gif
 
The enclosure is almost certainly in good working order. Just get a new drive to put inside. It'll be much cheaper, especially if you're looking for a FW800 external.
 
That's why I like this forum. Reusing my enclosure with a new drive hadn't occurred to me. Buying a bare drive will allow me to get a higher storage capacity for the same price as another fully-assembled external system.

Thanks, folks!

I guess the question that follows is this:
What are the better brands for bare drives these days: Seagate? WD? Has Maxtor gotten any better?
 
If you keep your external on most of the time, then you should look for an enclosure that has an internal fan. It's louder, but it sure makes them last longer. I have one Seagate that's almost 8 years old now and still running like a champ.
 
I put a SeaGate 1.5 TB 7200.11 bare drive in my iMac last year, and it has served me quite well. So, based on my sample of one, it has 100% reliability. :)
 
I know this may sound a little crazy...If you have any files that you would like to recover try sticking the drive into the freezer for an hour or two. As soon as you take the drive out of the freezer hook it up and see if you can get any of the data off. If this works at all it will not work for long, so make sure you get the most important items off first.

This happened to me once with an XBOX HD running XBMC. I had the only copy of a very important video and was able to recover it using this method. I have since then invested in a time capsule.
 
jxh4400 said:
I know this may sound a little crazy...If you have any files that you would like to recover try sticking the drive into the freezer for an hour or two. As soon as you take the drive out of the freezer hook it up and see if you can get any of the data off. If this works at all it will not work for long, so make sure you get the most important items off first.

This happened to me once with an XBOX HD running XBMC. I had the only copy of a very important video and was able to recover it using this method. I have since then invested in a time capsule.
Click to expand...

^ May sound crazy, but this has worked for me before.
 
Just a followup...

Last night, I managed to disassemble the enclosure without totally f***ing it up. Earlier this evening I bought and installed a WD Caviar Green 500Gb drive in said enclosure, and whaddayaknow, BlueRevolution's hunch was spot-on-- it's alive. It's doing an initial Time Machine backup as I write this.

I went with WD again (1) because I've had nice luck with WD drives in the past, and hey, MTBF is Mean Time, not Minimum Time, so it was bound to happen to me at some point; and (2) it was the cheapest 500Gb at Best Buy, which I usually avoid but I wanted the drive immediately.

The cost was $65, which is not terribly bad for this drive; the "B&M tax" was maybe $10 (NewEgg had similar models for about $55). For me, in this particular situation, it was worth it. I've doubled my previous capacity, to boot.
 
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