Western Digital Caviar SE WD2000JS

edited April 2007 in Hardware
So my Caviar has to go to the shop... :( When under anything over light load (even when some newer games load!) the hard drive freezes and the HD Activity light shines on and I can hear the HD click a little. I bought it from NewEgg; It was OEM and was $74.99. People seem to be having problems with these OEM versions. Well, My warranty isn't up until 3/08 so I couldn't deal with the constant resetting of the PC after these attacks. So I went to WD and got an RMA on it.

I did the Advanced RMA where they send you the new unit and then after I do all the data transferring, I send the defective back. I just needed to enter a CC number just incase I didnt send it back.

So what should I do? My WD is a 200GB SATA2 with about 100GBs of data on it. Should I reinstall everything cleanly or just do a Ghost transfer? If I should do a clean install of everything, would I be wise to install Vista x64 instead of XP Pro Corp again?

Nick

Comments

  • You know I have a similar problem with a regular IDE but it's my power cable cutting out for some reason. Personally If you've got everything set up right ghost it. But if you want to run XP 64 then install it and copy all your files over.
  • I would install x64 if only to test it. You may find that you appreciate some of the things left out of it, but included in the x86 edition. If so, get x86 and install that instead!

    I personally like the copy/reinstall idea, but I have NO idea what it is you've got on it now.

    -Q
  • Thanks. Are there any major things left out in x64?

    Nick
  • I've never been a big fan of Western Digital... seems like all the WD Caviar's I've had have given me problems too. I had like 4 Caviar 2GB hard drives in my old systems, that all just eventually died, I have some 500MB Maxtors that outlived them. On my Dell, my secondary workstation, the 120GB WDC died once, then for no reason came back to life, and has run since, but I still have my doubts due to the one time it wouldn't spin up correctly... squiggly.gif

    Personally, I'm a Maxtor fan. I've had good luck with Maxtor hard drives, knock on wood.

    -Kirk
  • I've never really had problems with any HDs. My new Seagate annoyed me because of their sleight-of-hand, and that old 6GB Seagate that Fish knows about was even worse! All my WDs and Maxtors have been fine.

    NTL: x64 has absolutely no DOS/16bit Windows support. There may be other things I don't remember.

    -Q
  • I have, sitting right next to me, a perfectly operating Caviar 33200 which is 3.2GB but I really love my 20GB Seagate. I will always love that drive. It's been so damn dependable. And my Fujitsu 6.4GB HD from my Packard Bell. That drive has been great too.

    Q: I'm not sure which I should choose... I really dont do DOS/16Bit anymore, but would the x64 give me better performance with my A64 3800+?

    Nick
  • Here's something else to consider, current/"normal" drivers are absolutely incompatible with x64. Check to make sure any vital hardware you have has generic or mfgr. 64 bit drivers, otherwise you'll be sunk (in Windows!).

    -Q
  • Oh Yeah, thats another thing...

    Thanks,
    Nick
  • From ASRock, All the drivers needed for the Motherboard are 64bit compatible.

    Nick
  • The drive in my parent's computer is a WD2500J (basically the same thing in IDE) and it's been running fine for 2 years, dunno what everyone has against WD :|
  • nightice wrote:
    dunno what everyone has against WD :|

    Nothing, you're just paranoid ;):D:lol:

    -Q
  • nightice wrote:
    The drive in my parent's computer is a WD2500J (basically the same thing in IDE) and it's been running fine for 2 years, dunno what everyone has against WD :|

    You have to realize. People assume hard drives live forever, and since its a mechanical device, it will never go bad.
  • well my 85 meg one is still ticking but I can't remember what make it is:P
  • vista x64 is the way to go. Xp's 64 bit drivers support sucked cock.
  • Probably because they've had more time for Vista then XP.

    -Q
  • Yeah...

    I dunno what one I should choose... XP or Vista. If I do Vista, it'll be 64bit. If XP, then either or.

    I get the replacement in on Monday and I have a month to send back my old one so I do have some time.

    Nick
  • You should try WVI 32bit just for testing purposes. Maybe install it on the old drive after you've copied everything over to the new one, install all 3 different new ones and see which you prefer. If you're going for 32bit, I suggest at least TRYING Vista.

    -Q
  • I've tried 32bit on here before, on an old drive, but I didn't like how I was limited with everything and the computer wanted to "hold my hand" through everything. I'm sure that can be disabled, but is it really leaps and bounds over XP? I'm not looking at it in a Graphics-Appeal standpoint. I just think that I have more (Or feel like I have more) control over XP.

    Nick
  • I'm not so sure what people see in WVI about that. Once I disabled the eye candy and set a few things to "Classic", I found it almost exactly like XP with a few exceptions. It actually seems to have MORE options in some areas then XP (EG. the systray display options).

    -Q
  • So I installed Vista and guess what. The HD error starts again... When under heavy use (copying files and opening a program at once) it freezes. The HD light stays on solid and the computer freezes.

    My PSU is 350W. Could that be the problem? I'm going to hook the HD up via normal SATA instead of SATA2 to see if thats the problem.

    Nick
  • Try SR6 and see if it detects any trouble.

    -Q
  • Ill have to look at that, but I've been installing Apps/Copying from HD to HD/Extracting & Compressing RAR files, and it hasn't given up with it being plugged into my regular SATA interface rather than SATA2. The regular SATA is ULi whereas the SATA2 is JMicron, which may be the problem.

    Thanks,
    Nick
  • NTL1991 wrote:
    When under heavy use (copying files and opening a program at once) it freezes. The HD light stays on solid and the computer freezes.

    Nick
    It's probably just Vista NTL1991.
    Slashdot says it's Vista

    Microsoft's Support

    Thump
  • It did that in XP Pro too. And by the way, the speed is fine as a 30MB file can be copied across a hard drive (from IDE 5400RPM to SATA 7200RPM) is instant. The copy dialog box doesnt even pop up, so there is no problem there... I'm thinking it was with the JMicron Hardware... I don't know.

    Nick
  • Oh, sorry, I guess I didn't understand. Well good luck with it.

    Thump
  • Yeah. I don't think it has anything to do with Vista, just my motherboard or SATA2 drivers/hardware.

    When it did it again, I was like WTF??? The drive was manufactured on the 28th of March this year so it has to be working fine... But normal SATA seems to be working well.

    Thanks All,
    Nick
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