Bad experience with WD Elements SE 750GB drive


second exodous

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The other day I ordered a portable drive for my Pandora and just got it and first plugged it into my Linux box. I went with the sightly more expensive Elements drive because reviews said there were no partitions that needed special tools to get rid of but it turns out the one I got did.


No problem, I just have to find someone with windows to get rid of it for me. I have a friend with a Mac that virtual boots windows so I asked if I could borrow his computer and plugged it into the Mac. After plugging it in the mouse and the keyboard stopped working, no matter where I plugged them into. I unplug the drive and the keyboard and mouse worked again, weird he says, that has never happened. When I go to unplug the cord from the drive I notice that the port on the case is really really loose, like a LOT of play, more on this later.


So, hunting down another friend with windows I finally get to formatting the drive with the HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool from the linked article above and went to formatting. It got to the last bar and it wouldn't go any farther, it froze windows. I've used this tool 2 times before and it worked great.


I decide it is just the case with the loose USB port and I think who cares, I plan on popping this out and putting it in my eee box for more space and then moving it's drive to a nice case that has eSATA but it still hasn't arrived so I plug it into my Linux box and it still has that weird partition. Grr. Well, I decide to pop it open because I think it is the USB port and it might work in a spare USB 2.0 case I have.


I have done this to many many drives that are tamper proof. Normally they are standard drives with little SATA to USB bridgboards that come off and wallah, standard drive. This one however has the SATA ports removed and a bridgeboard soldered directly onto it. The bridgeboard is wafer thin, like 1/3 the thickness of a standard circuit board and that is why the USB port is so wobbly. It is also not the standard thickness of a 2.5" drive, the reason I didn't order the 1GB version, it wouldn't fit in my eee box PC.


So I put it all together again, check the case before I did to make sure there was no scaring so WD can't say I opened it, and I'm going to send it back. It was broke before I even opened it so I think it is ok. Makes me a little mad though, the bare drive was a little more than the one in the case but I guess from now on I order bare drives with nice enclosures.
 
Sounds like they sent you a refurb claiming it was new. Take a lot of pictures.
 
Sounds like they sent you a refurb claiming it was new. Take a lot of pictures.
It looked new, had the plastic to protect the shiny and everything, but I just don't think it is engineered well. I don't know why they thought they could get away with a circuit board so thin. Also makes me mad that their external drives don't have unmodified standard drives in them anymore. I really like WD, drives are really reliable, but I don't think I'll ever get any of their external drives again.


Curious, why do you think it a referb? I'm sending it back tomorrow, Amazon sent me a free printable mailing label to send it back with. I don't think they ever even look at what is being replaced, I've left things out of the packaging on returns before by accident and they have never said anything. Plus I've only had it for a day so they shouldn't say anything.
 
Curious, why do you think it a referb?
From your description I assumed it had some previous non-blank partition on it, as well as your description about the loose USB cable makes it sound worn. Sorry if I was reading too much into it.


Either way, you're getting your money back, so it all works out in the end.
 
You've had no luck with hardware lately, have you?
Lol, yeah, it is all external HDDs also, something I have never had problems with in the past.


I got the external case that I ordered the other day, not the one I linked, I think it is the same case though just from a different company, but man it is sweet! Tool-less design, basically all you need is a paper clip, and has eSATA which with my old 140GB notebook drive where I was getting around 20MB/s over USB 2.0 I'm getting 55MB/s over the eSATA. I unfortunately don't use this drive anymore but until I find a good bare drive I'll be using it in this case.


I'll always get a good case with a bare drive from now on, it is just a lot safer in the end.
 
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between 2003 to 2005. Between myself and 3 other friends we all had Sager Desktop Replacement notebooks. All 4 came with Toshiba brand HDD's. All 4 failed within ~3 years...


WD has been kind to me in the 3.5" variety
 
between 2003 to 2005. Between myself and 3 other friends we all had Sager Desktop Replacement notebooks. All 4 came with Toshiba brand HDD's. All 4 failed within ~3 years...


WD has been kind to me in the 3.5" variety
I like WD drives, all but one of my drives I currently use are WD. I'll buy their bare drives but will never buy their external drives again. All the WD external drives I have are in different external cases or are taken out to live in my eee box PC or notebooks anyway. The drives themselves are great, but now I can't remove the drive from their external enclosure and use them other places so I'll just never buy any external drives from them.


2.5" pre-assembled in an external case is usually cheaper but with 3.5" 50% of the time its cheaper to buy an internal drive and put it in a 3rd party enclosure so I've never bought a external 3.5" drive in my life.
 
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