WD hard drive issue

[Bill Koehler]

Originally Posted by Ervin Farkas

...Another tip I found on the internet, but never had to try, is to place the drive in an air-tight plastic bag in the freezer for 15-20 minutes, then power it up...

Probably a bad solder joint, and the cold causes things to shrink enough to reestablish electrical contact, if only temporarily.

The plastic bag would be to keep moisture out, especially when you take the now cold drive out of the freezer and room moisture now wants to condense all over it.

[Brett Sherman]

Originally Posted by Dean Sensui

Just chiming in here: I've seen a lot of reports about WD drives giving people problems. I use Hitachi/IBM SATA drives and never experience any issues. There are about two dozen on my shelf, all used with a hot-swappable Firmtek enclosure. None have failed over the past several years since I started using the Firmtek setup.

All brands of hard drive can fail. I use Western Digital and haven't personally had any fail on me. I also have about 25 drives. Anecdotal evidence is not very good for judging reliability. The take home lesson is always have a backup. No brand is so reliable you don't need a backup.

I use a trayless enclosure so I don't even have to buy a $20 tray. I store the drives in Disney-style VHS cases with some extra foam to make a tight fit.

[Sam Mendolia]

I'll second Ervin's suggestion, about swapping the electronics.

I have done this a few times, with identical electronics, and had sucess everytime.

I tend to keep some similar "electonics", for just this occasion, and have gotten what I needed, then tossed the drive, sans the electronics of course.

I've also tried the "freezer" application, and had sucesses with that too.
Ususally keep it in overnight, let it thaw out slightly, in the bag, then straight into the powerup mode.

I'm an AV guy who works in an IT dept, so have come across similar issues.