The reports I have seen wee with regard to just Western Digital and Seagate.
You KEEP mentioning "reports" but all you provide links to are forum threads. Is a forum thread your idea of a report?
The problem was fixed by the companies themselves.
Not in either of the threads you have linked so far. Both the previous "sources" were caused by outdated drivers for the SATA Controller on NForce motherboards.
Users continue to report problems with the external 2TB drives.
users continue to report problems with their computers as well. That's hardly evidence that all computer manufacturers are "having problems". Additionally, as I said, if anything the problem is related to the size of the drive.
Still, one would ask, Why market such a device i retail stores like WlaMart and Staples if the drives could only be used with special utilities provided by the manufactures?
What special utilities? What are you talking about?
BC_programmer, you have some experience with system level programming.
Drivers? somewhat.
Is it really hard to build an eternal interface that will give the user help with a device?
WHAT DOES THIS EVEN HAVE TO DO WITH SEAGATE AND WD DRIVES?
Such as as an alert saying the utility they are trying to use is not suitable for the device?
Ok, I'll humour you than. WHAT utility and WHAT device?
You better answer yes.
I don't even know what you are asking, and more to the point, why you are asking it. What does driver-level programming knowledge have to do with WD and seagate drives having problems? I wanted citations and sources for this drivel you call facts that makes you think that Seagate and WD drives have a number of extra issues that are statistically significant on top of those experienced by hard drives as a whole.
Something like that has already been done and you know it.
if you say so...
It appears that the said companies made little effort to see if their stuff was compatible with what the industry was already doing.
Again, what the *censored* does this have to do with seagate and WD drives? What incompatibilities? See you keep stating these things and it's the SOURCE of these alleged facts I want to know, I don't want to hear more so-called facts and reiterations of what I have specifically asked for sources for.
What more links? Here are a few. Pick them apart.
I just want, reputable sources for this drivel you keep spewing. Forum posts do NOT constitute a reputable source in any case.
http://forums.seagate.com/t5/Other-External-products/Seagate-Expansion-2TB-Avoid-Unless-this-Problems-is-Fixed/td-p/41304
OK seriously, I'm not seeing the relevance. The OP's hard drive is an INTERNAL WD hard drive, presumably SATA; that thread talks about problems with a 2TB External, USB Seagate drive. You may see that there is a rather inordinate lack of any sort of correspondence between the two; different brands, different sizes, different interfaces, and different use-cases. For one thing, that thread discusses a problem that occurs when the PC using the drive is brought out of sleep mode. Considering that involves a problem dealing with the signals sent by USB it's almost certainly a problem with the USB to SATA bridge that is inside the external drive. Perhaps it's not sending those power events to the drive as IDE commands, or perhaps it deals with them incorrectly. Is it a problem? well, of course. Is it at all related to the drive itself? No. Is it related to internal drives like the OPs? No, not at all.
Not answered, 5 months ago.
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20110102043905AAl48e6
It has two answers. the First sentence sums it up nicely. "Any Drive can fail at any time for any reason". It has nothing to do- at least in this case- with brand names, particularly since almost all hard drives are made in the same factories anyway. Just because you can find a few forum thread and questions talking about how some poor saps WD external drive failed doesn't mean that the failure rate, or problem rate, of WD and seagate hard drives is higher than other brands. After all, I'm sure I could find just as many forum threads and questions that say the same thing about every other brand of any other device.
No answer
http://www.techsupportforum.com/forums/f16/problem-w-external-2tb-fantom-green-drive-542530.html
Again... not sure what this proves. It just proves that
one person has had issues with their hard drive of that brand. Additionally, we cannot "know" that this isn't file system level, the work of malware, or god knows what else. Assuming that "oh, you have a WD hard drive, well that is the problem" based on this nonsense as evidence is simply ridiculous.
A signature collusion?
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/14582-63-cannt-connect-external-hard-drives-once
Windows issue when mounting drives. Usually only occurs after cloning drives but can happen in other instances (like say when somebody buys two identical drives).
Apple user has 'stupid software' from WD?
http://www.hackint0sh.org/f291/109483.htm
No, Apple user is using 'stupid software' from Apple that doesn't let them choose a volume. How is this even relevant to your claims that WD and Seagate drives have "more problems" than other drives, particularly since you seem to be focusing on external drives, are usually minor setbacks, and half the time the problem is clearly with something other than the drive. Like say, crappy Apple software that doesn't let you choose a volume and instead makes assumptions about what it should look at. yeah, because that is TOTALLY WD's fault. How dare they have the
sheer gall to release a composite USB device that exposes two device nodes to the poor Apple product! Why it didn't know what to do, so it did what it did best- it just did something random.
Another Apple User
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1160717
OK first off, that's not a WD or a seagate drive, it's a LaCIE, second, they dropped it and it simultaneously got disconnected during use. You seriously want to say this is somehow the hard drive manufacturer's screw-up?
Posted this year.
http://forums.techguy.org/hardware/992257-wd-2tb-external-hard-drive.html
And the stream of irrelevance continues!
You know what that person wants? They want a way to format their 2TB drive to use FAT32. I fail to see how any of what is presented in that thread somehow constitutes a failure on the part of WD. Are they supposed to magically make windows allow FAT32 to be used on the 2TB drive? Not to mention they did indeed find a piece of software to do that.
But seriously, What does that have to do with ANYTHING that you've stated. How does that back up your facts of irrelevance, telling people they should "try another brand" of hard drive because you somehow think that changing the hard drive will fix the problem where the machine refuses to boot from the HD,
or the CD, is something you ought to back up with real information, not some unrelated forum thread about filesystem conversion.
Many of these,if not all, are because the user does not check the documentation and stick to what the manufacture says. Still, why is it so hard for the manufacture to tell people do not use any other utilities.
I repeat again
WHAT UTILITIES? What manufacturer provided utility should that user have used to magically make their 2TB drive format to FAT32? What manufacturer utility makes the Apple software actually LOOK AT THE FREAKING DEVICE to see how many devnodes it has rather then just going with the first one and pretending it's right? More to the point, how are these problems, which are both inherent in other software - Windows refuses to format a drive/partition larger than a given size as FAT32 and the Apple software refuses to acknowledge the existence of devices with multiple device nodes, something that has been supported since USB 1.1 - somehow the hard drive manufacturer's responsibility to absolve? Tire manufacturers aren't going to make sure you know that the tire has to be filled with air and not kerosene.
Only one low end external by Seagate.
Now mention was made about drives that did not get over three stars. Or the ones that would not work at all.
http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/collection/1650/top_10_external_hard_drives.html
What are you even talking about.
http://www.zdnet.com/reviews/filter/external-hard-drives?categoryId=3190&filter=100021_10197437&tag=mantle_skin;content
Ok, so you've proven that... well, you can buy external hard drives. Good work. I wasn't arguing against that but it's good of you to build that straw man, although I think that was entirely unintentional.
These are more or less user forums.
As opposed, to you know, something statistically significant, which you imply this whole WD/Seagate "problem" to be. If it was the case, why can you find no statistically significant information on it?
Should I dip into the industry forms and newsletters?
Not if you are going to make the same arguments to irrelevance and redundant points you tried to make with the user forum links, no.
Yet users are still complaining about external 2 TB drives.
The OP's drive is internal, and it's 1TB. and almost all of those "complaints" were software issues unrelated to the drive itself.
Must be a lot of NVidia chip sets out there.
The NForce issue obviously only applies to internal drives. See, I made this silly mistake of assuming that what you were advising the OP to do was somehow based on your analysis of his situation- whereby he uses internal, SATA, 1TB WD drives. However I now see it was just pulled out of thin air and had absolutely nothing to do with the OP's actual situation and everything to do with your inability to allow somebody to mention using a WD or Seagate drive without advising that they try a different brand as if their problem was caused by it. even those clearly unrelated to the drive at all, as in this case, where neither the HD nor the CD worked- and he returned and advised that the cause was in fact motherboard failure. So unless you want to weave some hair-breadth conspiracy theory where WD drives are now causing motherboard failures, it was clearly completely redundant.
