Western digital a reliable brand?

am planning to upgrade the HDD on my macbook core 2 duo to 250gb og western digital's HDD.
is it a reliable brand?

Hi Alvin Ray,
every person have different preference on each brand.
for me, western digital is not my favorite, not specifically for laptop HD, but I have a stack of dead 3.5 form factor IDE western digital HD from mac and PC that I pull and replaced from my office computers.
Good Luck.

Similar Messages

Replacing HDD - Western Digital or brand?

Hi, everyone,
I'm looking at buying either a Western Digital Scorpio Blue 250GB/320GB as seen here:
http://ncix.com/products/?sku=52149&vpn=WD3200BEVTRTL&manufacture=Western%20Digi tal%20WD
Is Western Digital a good make these days? Any recommendations would be appreciated!
Thanks for your help.
Wilde

Just for example:
A Macbook Pro 20xx edition, came with 250 gb hitachi HDD. then your upgrade HDD must be hitachi brand too.
Not true at all. Any make will do, as long as it meets the specs. Don't bother to upgrade your drive unless you're going to more than double the capacity you have now — you'll just end up wanting to upgrade a gain in a year or two.
Western Digital drives are fine when used internally. Stay away from WD external drives: the enclosures are junk, saddled with lousy bridge chipsets and firmware that really gets in the way for many Mac users.
Message was edited by: eww

Has anyone tried a Western Digital SATA RAID hard drive on a non-RAID controler?

Because of a compatability problem, I want to try a different brand of SATA II drive on my non-RAID motherboard. The WD RAID drives have great specs but I don't know if they will work. WD says they are ONLY for RAID and not to put them on a non-RAID board. My theory is that they will be more reliable over the long term because they are a heavier duty drive.
Has anyone tried this and if so, what were the results?

I think there was some confusion about what I am asking. It is definately not a duplication of my other post and some of the information in that other post is incorrect because I JUST found out that my motherboard controller IS a RAID controller even though I am not using it as one. I will correct that when I am finished with this post.
The other post was about a specific model of Maxtor drive that doesn't work on my motherboard. This post is about Western Digital. The only reason that I even mentioned the word RAID in my previous post is that there is a known compatibility problem with RAID controllers and that drive. I wanted to emphasize that my problem was not the one of that known compatibility problem, but because it is a RAID controller, it might be that problem.
When you use the motherboard's controller as a non-RAID controller, you do format the drives individually, not as a RAID. I know that because I did it that way, not realizing I even had the option of using RAID on this board. That works fine on one model of Maxtor hard drive and does not work at all on the other model of Maxtor hard drive.
What I want to know now is: Will the Western Digital RAID drives will work on a non-RAID controller. The controllers on my add-in card is not RAID. Also, will that drive work on my motherboard's controller even though it is not being used as RAID.
Here is a link to the WD site's description of one such drive. There are several other WD RAID drives, this is just one example... http://www.wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=238&Language=en It does not state whether or not they will work well in a non-RAID environment.

Airport Extreme 802.11n & Western Digital (My Book Essential 1TB)

I just bought a Airport Extreme 2days ago. I am trying to connect to my external HDD which is Western Digital, My book Essential, 1TB. But I just could not see the HDD on my laptop. The HDD is detected by the the airport utility and shows 930.9GB WD My Book 1110 1032. I have enable file sharing on the device as well. But i just could not see the HDD. I have tried connecting my both laptops wirelessly & using EtherNet Cable, for both options, the HDD is still not visible. Please help me
Details as below,
Airport Extreme with firmware version 7.5.1
Airport Utility, version 5.5.1
All systems at home are Windows XP with Service Pack 3
Internet Type: Cable
HDD details
Brand & Model: Western Digital, My Book Essential, 1TB
Format : NTFS
Network description, Cable modem -> AE -> HDD into the USB of the AE
All laptop are on wireless.
I have called up the apple support helpdesk, which they ask me to hold on, but the line was cut off, and no one actually call me back.
I badly need help to get this working..

I have the same WD drive on my Airport. In the Airport utility, I have checked the "Enable File Sharing" box. I have selected to share with my Airport Extreme password. Further down the page, the workgroup box is filled in as "WORKGROUP" - I did not have to do this, the Airport seems to have detected it. If you have nothing there, you might want to fill it in.
On the PC, with File Explorer, expand the tree My Network Places:Entire Network:Microsoft Windows Network:Workgroup. The Airport shows up here. When I click it, I get a prompt for username and password. I use the info from the PC that I use to manage the airport. Then My Book shows up and I can browse it.

Can anyone verrify if the western digital raptor will work on my computer?

I need a new hard drive and I wanted to know if the western digital raptor works well in a dual 2.7GHz power pc g5.
here is a link to the hard drive
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=23686 32&CatId=0
Thanks so much for the help
-Sam

There were two versions of the 74 GB Raptor - the older one with an 8MB cache, and the newer one with the 16MB cache. The 16MB cache version is basically the same as the 150GB Raptor with one less platter inside.
My understanding of the Raptor compatibility is this:
If you have a G5 Quad, all Raptors will work with no problems (I have a 150GB Raptor as my boot drive in my Quad and have had zero issues).
If you have one of the other dual-core models besides the Quad, the Raptors seem to be pretty reliable, but some users have reported problems. Adding a third-party SATA controller card solves the problems.
If you have a pre-dual core machine, the 8MB cache 74GB Raptor will work fine. The 16MB cache models need a separate controller card to avoid issues.
Do a search for "Raptor" in this forum and you'll find some quite lenghty threads on the subject. Macgurus.com forums also have some good information. In addition, I'd check XLR8YourMac's Drive Compatibility Database for info. The main thing to look for is reports on the 16MB cache version, which is what you linked to.
PowerMac G5 Quad (4.5 GB RAM, GeForce 7800 GT), 17-inch PowerBook G4 (2 GB RAM) Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Mac Desktop cannot see Western Digital HD

My Mac desktop with 10.9.4 cannot see Western Digital external hard drive when connected via Firewire 800 wire in any port.
If I use the USB 2.0 wire to connect both units, then WD works perfectly. I have tried repairing permissions,
rebooted, called WD for update, tried a brand new Firewire 800...and nothing has worked.
Any help would be appreciated.
Thank you.

Have you tried to zap your PRAM? Sometimes this will help when a port stops working.
Reset PRAM: http://support.apple.com/kb/PH14222

Western Digital HD choice, somewhat directed towards the hatter

I have two 250GB drive in my system: the stock seagate 250 GB, and the slowest western digital 250 GB kinda "budget" drive. The budget drive was given to me.. I would really like better performance under heavy high definition audio tracking with sampling in logic studio.
Being very limited on money.. I think I'm going to keep the seagate system drive, sell the western digital to my buddy who needs it, and get two 250GB western digital drives to be put in a raid 0 array. I want 250GB drives for the the $$ - I would much rather have performance than size.
I think I'm deciding between the WD Caviar SE16, and the WD Caviar RE. The RE says better raid performance, and it has a fast write time in its specs, and boasts long term reliability - something I would value in a vulnerable raid 0 system. I think I should get the RE?

Hi Hatter,
fair enough
I use both drives currently by the way; so here's my reasoning for my opinion and I would argue (nicely ) that WD would disagree that RE2 for single-drive use is the best way to go:
The only technical differences between the RE2 and SE 16 (other than the non-tech warranty, MTBF and burn-in periods, which I don't discount!) are
1. The TLER (“Time Limited Error Recovery”) feature which the SE16 does not have.
This feature changes the error-recovery window for the drive, which is fine, in fact, desired for a Raid array where it's redundancy features are expected to cover. However for a single-setup drive, or for Raid 0 this means that the RE2 is not as capable of recovering (in theory) and won't try as long
For drives that find themselves in a setup that features redundancy (anything other than RAID 0), this is a plus. For disks that don’t, it’s not.
2. The head tilting feature (RAFF) of the RE2 - which is a plus in a multi-disk, more-prone-to-vibrating environment (like Raid) but not so much in a desktop (high-end as it may be). Basically more vibration-tolerant.
Other than that, the electronics, features (NCQ etc.) seem identical. As far as I am concerned, this seems they are really electronically virtually identical with firmware optimizations geared towards Raid or single-drive usage; and varying warranties.
On the other hand, I look at more or less identical performance, but a (to me) clearly optimized for the non-redundant desktop drive in the SE16. For a Raid 5 or Raid 1 array (software or hardware) I'd go for the RE2 as well (I'd do either over the RE!).
Western Digital themselves say this about their RE2 series:
"Inside a RAID system, where the RAID controller handles error recovery, the drive needn't pause for extended periods to recover data. In fact, heroic error recovery attempts can cause a RAID system to drop a drive out of the array. WD RE2 is engineered to prevent hard drive error recovery fallout by limiting the drive's error recovery time. With error recovery factory set to seven seconds, the drive has time to attempt a recovery, allow the RAID controller to log the error, and still stay online."
Cheers,
Dan

Western Digital MYBOOK Premium! **Issues**

I am getting bombarded with clients giving me the Western Digital MyBooks... and I am having the same issue on all of them!
At first, I had to format them using Disk Utility as "MAC OS EXTENDED" to avoid a disk error saying that the hard drive was full. After re-formating the drive, the transfer speeds are retardedly slow. (eg - about 28 hour to transfer 74 gigs).
I called Western Digital and they told me the hard-drive was defective. However, this is a familiar problem with the Western Digital brand.
I was wondering if there is a manual way to enhance the transfer speeds. I have it connected via USB 2.0 .

I don't know if this will be of any help for you since you are running the USB version of the mybook. We had a situation where we were using two 2TB Mybooks for secondary backup of a server. the Mybooks would lock up the finder after a few days, and we have had multiple issues with them. We found that the server was reporting a stuck process right off the bat after rebooting. It was a western digital program/driver for the mybook. Try deleting the below file and see how it works. USB will still be a bit slower than firewire however.
<volume>/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.WD.WDDriveServices.plist

How do I figure out if I have usb 3.0? I am trying to buy compatible external hard drive (western digital my passport for mac) and I can not figure out if it will work with my mac book.

how do I figure out if I have usb 3.0? I am trying to buy compatible external hard drive (western digital my passport for mac) and I can not figure out if it will work with my mac book.

Dont buy a Western Digital, get a Hitachi or Seagate (Toshiba is made by Hitachi). These are the most reliable, and the HD used inside Macs.
ALL HD can be made compatible with your MAC (including a WD if you already bought same), ......they just need to be formatted for the Mac platform, format them in Disk Utility as Mac OSX extended journaled.

Cannot Erase/Format External Western Digital "My Book" Hard Drive

I have a brand new Western Digital "My Book" Hard Drive that I would like to use for SuperDuper clone backup. I am attempting to format the disk for Mac-OS Extended first.
When I connect the HD to my MBP via USB, an error message pops up saying "Disk Insertion - The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer." I then enter Disk Utility. The Western Digital HD is shown in the left pane as a 596.2 GB External Media. The Volume Format is shown as MS-DOS (FAT).
I attempted to erase/format for Mac-OS Extended (Journaled). Selecting the volume in the left pane and then clicking erase returns the error message "Disk Erase Failed with the error: File System Formatter Failed." Just for kicks I tried to erase/format for regular Mac-OS Extended, same result. It will let me erase/format for MS-DOS (FAT), but that's how it's already formatted and doesn't help me.
I tried to erase/format on my wife's MBP, exact same results. Am I doing something wrong or do I have a problem with the external hard drive?
Any help appreciated.
Thanks,
Barry

Thanks for the feedback. Good computing and welcome to the Mac world. Since you're new, see these:
Switching from Windows to Mac OS X,
Basic Tutorials on using a Mac,
Mac 101: Mac Essentials,
Anatomy of a Mac,
MacFixIt Tutorials,
MacTips, and
Switching to the Mac: The Missing Manual, Leopard Edition.
Additionally, *Texas Mac Man* recommends:
Quick Assist.
Welcome to the Switch To A Mac Guides,
Take Control E-books, and
A guide for switching to a Mac.

Western Digital

Okay, so I have read the news articles and reports about the possibility of data loss on Western Digital External drives but I still have some questions.
I upgraded to Mavericks before learning about the drive problems, but then disconnected them as soon as I heard. Before I had unplugged them, they had worked fine, and I had not had any data loss.
So here is my question, what has Western Digital done to fix this and when will that fix be in place?
Also, if I didn't have any problems with my drives before I unplugged them, is it okay to plug them back in?
Is it a problem with the Western Digital software or Mavericks? Both?
I just want to know when I can start using my drives again . . .
Thanks for the help!
Further information:
Drive 1:
6TB Dual HDD Thunderbolt External Hard Drive (Time Machine Backup & Misc. Files)
Drive 2:
1TB USB 3.0 External Hard Drive (Misc. Files)

More info from the WD Community topic I linked to above...
If for some reason you cannot download & use the uninstaller WD now has on its downloads pages, according to a WD tech, you can do this instead:
Steps to completely remove WD SmartWare from your Mac:
Run the SmartWare uninstaller application located in /Applications/
Using Apple’s Activity Monitor from /Applications/Utilities quit the following processes:
WDDMService
WD Quick View
SmartwareServerApp
Delete /Library/LaunchDeamons/com.wdc.WDDMService.plist (Entry that causes WDDM to start.)
Delete /Library/LaunchDeamons/com.wdc.WDSmartWareServer.plist (Entry that causes the SmartWare Server to start.)
Delete /Applications Support/WDSmartware (Removes all SmartWare support programs)
Delete /Application/WDSmartWare (SmartWare user interface)
Delete Library/Preferences/com.wdc.smartware.plist
From System Preferences->Users Login Items remove WDQuickview for all users. (Entry that runs WD Quick View when a user logs in. There should be a single entry for all users. Deleting it from one any account should remove it for all accounts.)
Once you do that, or download & run the uninstaller, it should be safe to plug in & use your external drives.
Note that the problem with the WD utilities, whatever it is, can affect other brands of external drives, not just WD ones. The symptom is unexpected reformatting of the attached drive(s) without user intervention. According to at least one user, after the reformat the drive has just an EFI partition & one named "MyBook," even for other brands that don't use the WD "MyBook" trade name.

Western Digital 1tb not readable

My Laptop stopped working, plugged my western digital 1tb into my new macbook pro and it has a connection error. I receive a message saying it is not readable. Any help would be much appreciated.
Thanks in advance.

The electronics in the Western Digital external backup drives aren't known to be very reliable. You might try to see if it is readable on another system, and if not, then, if under warranty, contact Western Digital, or if not, remove the hard drive and put it into another external case.
If you need an external case, I like cases sold by OWC at http://www.macsales.com. Many of their cases use Oxford chipsets, which work well with macs.

Western Digital External Drive unmounts when USB used

I have a Western Digital 1TB My Book Studio edition external HDD. Its been unmounting recently without warning. I fianlly narrowed it down to when I plug or unplug a USB device such as a headset.
The drive is running in FW as I dont have any spare USB ports. WD are now blaming the computer. After reading other issues people have had with WD I dont believe them. I'm about to install 10.5.8 but I doubt this will fix it, also the HDD has the latest firmware.
Has anyone else had this sort of problem or have any suggestions?

I have a Western Digital 500 GB My Book that mysteriously mounts or doesn't mount about 50% of the time. Am using it in FW, though I've also tried USB with no change in behavior.
The drive gets fiercely hot - I suspect this might be contributing to the bad behavior of the drive. If I check the System Profiler when the drive doesn't mount, it is showing in the System Profiler - but doesn't appear on my desktop.
Out-of-warrantee support is $50 - or I can throw it out and buy a different brand for about $100! Guess which one I will choose!

Western Digital Drive issue

I installed a lacie driver for my lacie 1tb drive, and before it 100% installed, it also turned on my western digital and installed the drivers for it, how can I uninstall the drivers from the wd? main issue now it will not turn off like it should and light will not turn off.

When I hear "installed" I think internal, not external, in terms of drives and controllers. Sounds like you didn't disconnect everything but the drive case you wanted to update the firmware on. And it flashed firmware on multiple devices.
So first question, are you sure you installed an extension driver only? In which case you can uninstall driver extensions.
If you flash a device, best (and there should have been a README and warning about turning off and disconnecting other devices) before flashing firmware.
Link to LaCie page I guess would help.
As for WD and LaCie, I think there are just more issues with both brands (and Seagate).
I've seen others report something about auto-sleep or powering off "not working" on Mac Pro 2008.
I only use Oxford based FW devices from OWC, use them "as/when needed" and power them off and leave the off the rest of the time, and rely on external SATA when I need more than just the occasional backup or something.
The only 'solution' may be to buy a bare case and move the drives into that.

Which Western Digital 500GB drive?

I'm ready to buy an internal non-raid 500 GB SATA drive and I decided on the Western Digital brand. The only problem is that I see at least three model numbers for, what looks like, the same or similar drives. The model numbers are as follows:
WD5000KS
WD5000AAKS
WD5000KSRTL
The prices vary and the WD5000AAKS is the least expensive offered by ZipZoomFly for only $136.50.
Can anyone advise me on the differences (if any) between these models and which would be the preferred model to get for an Intel MacPro? Thanks.

My choice: Caviar SE16 WD5000KS
Found this from Google SilenPCreview forums
WD5000KS vs WD5000AAKS
I don't have any test equipment, but I do have a 5 KS's and 2 AAKS. All are at 128 AAM in rubber grommet mounting.
Subjectively:
The AAKS are only very slightly quieter than the KS's. They do have noticeably less vibration. Seek noise is the same on both. Spin up/ Spin down is quieter on the AAKS.
I usually go by StorageReview forums and reviews, and SilentPCReviews, as well as look to see if AMUG has anything to say. Also, check WDC Store
I buy direct from WDC (so I would get latest model) as well as ZZF and OWC.
Mac Pro 2GHz 4GB 10K Raptor 23" Cinema Mac OS X (10.4.8) WD RE RAID DW 4.0 APC RS1500 Vista

Western digital a reliable brand?

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