On Fri, 15 Feb 2013 23:12:27 -0800, Oren wrote:

On Sat, 16 Feb 2013 01:41:00 -0500, wrote:

I have seen lots of bad drives. Far more than half are W/D Caviar.

WD drives do fail. Just like any other drive. My experience is they
fail after the warranty. Those that failed earlier were replaced with
no questions asked. Cross shipped from WD before the return was sent.

In September I put in a 1GB WD Black that has a 5 year warranty. WD
drives used to be 3 year warranty.

I still trust them better than some brands I've had -- Maxtor,
Seagate, et al. Seagate Barracuda SCSI was a good drive when I ran
SCSI.
Personally I don't careHOW good the WARRANTY is - it is the quality
of the drive that matters. The cost to the customer of restoring even
a good backup is generally higher than the cost of the drive - and if
there is any problem with the restore - - - .Or if the backup is a
couple days old and data is lost- - - - -.

I'd rather have a drive (or just about anything else) that has a
reputation for long life and high quality with no warranty than a
piece of crap with a 15 year warranty with no-questions asked next day
replacement.

Lifetime warranty car batteries that get replaced every 2 years are a
pet peeve of mine - along with "lifetime" mufflers that last a year
and a half - and you end up paying to replace all the pipes every
second time, as well as the labour. Much rather head off to the local
custom bender and have a custom bent stainless system installed for
less than the price of OEM, just slightly more than aftermarket jobber
parts, and have it last 15 years.