Thanks WD

Zaptecc · July 22, 2016

So, I have a long story, and if you want to hear the short version, look down below. But here is the whole thing:

About 2 weeks ago, I ordered a 1TB WD Blue, to be precise the ever-popular WD10EZEX model. I received it a day or two after I ordered it, which is pretty good. But things got slowly worse and worse from there. I ended up with a DOA (dead on arrival) drive. So of course, I set up an RMA. The RMA went pretty well, and they sent me the new drive fairly quickly, without having to return the first one. I got home and opened up my drive, and plugged it in, and..........it was dead. Another DOA drive. I replied back, but my support assistant was out of town for a few more days. I was fine with waiting, but I knew my drive wasn't running real well anyways. When my support assistant got back from a trip, he responded to my email almost immediately, he told me that I should call in because he wasn't in a high enough level of support to help me any further, which made a lot of sense. I called in the day after, and I got on the phone with someone, who looked at my case, and he told me to expect an email within 24 hours of talking with him. So I waited. It had been over 96 hours and I still hadn't received an email, so I emailed support this time. I got a support assistant, and he said he would upgrade the drive, which was what my original support assistant said the higher levels of support would do for me, and so he sent me an email confirming the upgrade. I was all ready to go to a post office and ship out the old drive so they could send me the replacement, when the doorbell rang. It was the replacement drive! So I opened it up, and found out that it was a WD Green, which is not at all what I wanted. First of all, the whole reason I got a new drive is because the old one was 5400rpm and I was starting to notice that it was getting slow, and I actually noticed that on a different computer. In the world of SSDs, it's pretty painful using a 5400rpm drive, unless it's in a laptop, but even so this drive specifically says, 'Not for use in a laptop.' If it wasn't obvious by now, I should also mention that it's a 2.5" drive, which I'm really not happy with, because my case has no 2.5" mounting points, just 3.5"! So right now, as I'm writing this, I'm running an empty copy of Windows (except for Chrome of course) and my hard drive is sitting on the bottom of my case. Yes, I know I could get a 2.5" to 3.5" adapter, but I'm really broke and I don't want to have to wait for shipping.

Short version:

I ordered a drive from WD, and they sent me a DOA drive. I setup an RMA and got another DOA drive. So I had to setup another RMA, but they sent me a slower, smaller drive, which is not what I wanted.

Overall Question:

Are there any ways to speed up this drive, and if so, what are they? I really am not impressed with WD at this point and I'm tempted to just sell this drive on ebay and get a different drive from a different manufacturer. If I do end up doing that, could I get some recommendations on a storage solution? I need no more than 1TB of space, as I'm a student and most of my schoolwork is stored in the cloud these days. I also do some casual gaming, but nothing super intensive, so it doesn't take up that much space. The ideal setup would be a ~120GB M.2 SSD, and a 1TB SSHD or regular hard drive. I just don't know which models to get, but I'm done with WD drives.

Thanks!

MrDrWho13 · July 22, 2016

I'd suggest returning/selling that drive, and then buying any SSD since you don't need the storage space and the speed is unparalleled. I recently switched from a WD green to a 240gb hyperx ssd (£50 UK) and my boot time has gone from 3 minutes to 20 seconds or less.

Not just boot times, but program opening is instant and I don't get lag in some games where the HDD used to be the bottleneck.

Zaptecc · July 22, 2016

13 minutes ago, MrDrWho13 said:

I'd suggest returning/selling that drive, and then buying any SSD since you don't need the storage space and the speed is unparalleled. I recently switched from a WD green to a 240gb hyperx ssd (£50 UK) and my boot time has gone from 3 minutes to 20 seconds or less.

Not just boot times, but program opening is instant and I don't get lag in some games where the HDD used to be the bottleneck.

Alright, thanks!

ARikozuM · July 22, 2016

27 minutes ago, lightningdude38 said:

So, I have a long story, and if you want to hear the short version, look down below. But here is the whole thing:

About 2 weeks ago, I ordered a 1TB WD Blue, to be precise the ever-popular WD10EZEX model. I received it a day or two after I ordered it, which is pretty good. But things got slowly worse and worse from there. I ended up with a DOA (dead on arrival) drive. So of course, I set up an RMA. The RMA went pretty well, and they sent me the new drive fairly quickly, without having to return the first one. I got home and opened up my drive, and plugged it in, and..........it was dead. Another DOA drive. I replied back, but my support assistant was out of town for a few more days. I was fine with waiting, but I knew my drive wasn't running real well anyways. When my support assistant got back from a trip, he responded to my email almost immediately, he told me that I should call in because he wasn't in a high enough level of support to help me any further, which made a lot of sense. I called in the day after, and I got on the phone with someone, who looked at my case, and he told me to expect an email within 24 hours of talking with him. So I waited. It had been over 96 hours and I still hadn't received an email, so I emailed support this time. I got a support assistant, and he said he would upgrade the drive, which was what my original support assistant said the higher levels of support would do for me, and so he sent me an email confirming the upgrade. I was all ready to go to a post office and ship out the old drive so they could send me the replacement, when the doorbell rang. It was the replacement drive! So I opened it up, and found out that it was a WD Green, which is not at all what I wanted. First of all, the whole reason I got a new drive is because the old one was 5400rpm and I was starting to notice that it was getting slow, and I actually noticed that on a different computer. In the world of SSDs, it's pretty painful using a 5400rpm drive, unless it's in a laptop, but even so this drive specifically says, 'Not for use in a laptop.' If it wasn't obvious by now, I should also mention that it's a 2.5" drive, which I'm really not happy with, because my case has no 2.5" mounting points, just 3.5"! So right now, as I'm writing this, I'm running an empty copy of Windows (except for Chrome of course) and my hard drive is sitting on the bottom of my case. Yes, I know I could get a 2.5" to 3.5" adapter, but I'm really broke and I don't want to have to wait for shipping.

Short version:

I ordered a drive from WD, and they sent me a DOA drive. I setup an RMA and got another DOA drive. So I had to setup another RMA, but they sent me a slower, smaller drive, which is not what I wanted.

Overall Question:

Are there any ways to speed up this drive, and if so, what are they? I really am not impressed with WD at this point and I'm tempted to just sell this drive on ebay and get a different drive from a different manufacturer. If I do end up doing that, could I get some recommendations on a storage solution? I need no more than 1TB of space, as I'm a student and most of my schoolwork is stored in the cloud these days. I also do some casual gaming, but nothing super intensive, so it doesn't take up that much space. The ideal setup would be a ~120GB M.2 SSD, and a 1TB SSHD or regular hard drive. I just don't know which models to get, but I'm done with WD drives.

Thanks!

Red Text: Please don't.

I would go with an Adata SP SSD and get yourself one of the new 2TB Blues. They're 5400 but they're using 2 x 1TB platters which are very responsive even compared to the single 1TB platter of the older model. And 5400RPM vs 7200RPM isn't as far as you might think. Even though common sense would say it 2/3 as fast, it's usually only 10% slower.