[MW Forums]

Western Digital has introduced a new 320GB drive specifically for laptops and portable drive enclosures. more

[drdreric]

A few years back the consensus seemed to be that WD drives were dead last in quality and durability. What have people's experiences been like lately? Thanks in advance....

[swartzfeger]

Great for storage, but I'm curious how the 5400 rpm would affect performance.

[D_Champagne]

The size of the internal hard drive on a MacBookPro is second to the speed of the drive. Mine came with a 160GB @5400rpm. I've seen the larger drives come out, but there is not any performance improvement.
I'm booting from an external miniStack V3, 500GB @7200rpm, using the FW800 port and I'm seeing a 30% improvement on booting and launching applications. The internal drive is only used when I'm away from the office and just want basic features...

[Machound]

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A few years back the consensus seemed to be that WD drives were dead last in quality and durability. What have people's experiences been like lately? Thanks in advance....

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My question too. I've had WD drives fail on me... admittedly these were lower end 3.5" 200 GB drives, not the newer drives being made under Seagate's leadership. Western Digital's web page makes no mention of warranty coverage. 1 year? 3 years? 5 years?
What's the consensus on WD's 2.5 inch drive quality these days? Is Scorpio a low end or mid-level product line?

[mosley]

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A few years back the consensus seemed to be that WD drives were dead last in quality and durability. What have people's experiences been like lately? Thanks in advance....

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My World Book Pro has lasted well if a bit noisy. I agree with others though that uptodate Hard Drive comparison reviews are urgently needed especially now with Time Machine becoming such a "feature" of 10.5

[dux5]

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I agree with others though that uptodate Hard Drive comparison reviews are urgently needed especially now with Time Machine becoming such a "feature" of 10.5

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Concur.
I don't mean to be adding to the chorus, but I only clicked into this link in hopes of finding out if quality had improved. The only -- and I'm heavily knocking on wood -- drive that's ever failed me was from WD. Their attitude was pretty pissy about it, too.
Then again, I desperately need to boost the storage on my MBP and 320 is pretty tempting.

[Felix001]

I'm thinking about putting the upcoming Toshiba 320GB/5,400 RPM 2.5-inch MK-GSY drive in a bus-powered portable firewire case to use with Time Machine on a MacBook Pro.
Believe I'd rather have a Toshiba than a WD although I have seen no MTBF studies indicating Toshiba is any more reliable.

[MacCheetah3]

Hi
My experience / knowledge and from what I've heard from recovery companies ( which deal with drives all the time, of course ) leads me to list both 3.5" and 2.5" from best to worst...
1) Seagate
2) Hitachi
3) Western Digital
4) Samsung
WD is a fairly respected company. Seagate only wins on my list because of the 5 year warranty. Otherwise, quality wise, Hitachi and Seagate are both top for me. I haven't had hands on / heard enough of Samsung to give a true opinion but the little I've read / heard has been positive and I feel highly of them with other products ( HDTVs, ... )
Last...
3.5" = Maxtor
2.5" = Toshiba
All in all in conclusion, however, being hard drives are mechanical, they will fail and they will be the most likely component to fail in an electronic device that uses them i.e. iPod.

[Ronald_Schoedel]

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A few years back the consensus seemed to be that WD drives were dead last in quality and durability. What have people's experiences been like lately? Thanks in advance....

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Thanks for asking! I just had a WD firewire drive crap out on me...dead....stone cold dead. I am in the process of recovering my data from the backups right now. It was a 320 GB drive, purchased four years ago. I have older drives from other manufacturers which have not died on me, some years older.
In my entire history of owning computers, I have had exactly two HD crashes: this one, and one 12 years ago. Guess what brand that HD was? It was an internal WD inside my Performa LC 575.
I've had it with WD drives. I checked all my Macs to make sure none of them have internal WD drives, and one does. My iMac G5 has a WD internal and I am going to be doubly sure to get that data backed up even more frequently than now.
Ronald "don't buy WD drives" Schoedel

[sandbag1]

I had a WD My Book to use for backups and to use as a bootable hard drive with my G5 iMac and was disappointed when the backup clone I made with Superduper could not be used as a boot drive. I went to the WD web site and found this information. Click Here

[aestival]

I replaced al older noiser internal drive on my PowerBook G4 not too long ago, and the benefits, including virtually no noise and longer batter life, more than made up for the paltry cost of a new drive. I recommend the same to anyone who has ever had even the slightest hard drive problem on an old-ish laptop -- don't wait until you have to restore from a backup (I did, and even though I didn't lose a single file, I certainly could have lived without the hours lost restoring data and the days before that, waiting for the new drive to appear).

[Machound]

Replying to correct a misstatement I made above... Seagate manages Maxtor, not Western Digital. Sorry for the brain failure!