WD Purple new -> Dead

[Arjun]

Amazon's Prime Membership is absolutely useless now. They had some of my orders pushed out up to July 11 which wasn't acceptable by any means. It had a wide delivery date window (June 15 - July 11). I immediately cancelled all of my orders and was able to get these items for about the same price from another online retailer; shipped promptly and well-packaged, including hard-drives which came with the proper padding and bubble wrap where necessary.

That's just not acceptable...I'd make some photos, send it back and tell them why.

I've bought probably 80-90 drives from amazon since 1997 and they were always either in a purpose-built hard drive box (with a cast plastic holder on each end that suspends the drive in the middle) or wrapped with 2 layers of good bubble wrap and then air-cell packed tightly in the middle of a suitably-sized cardboard box.

I haven't bought any HDD's in the last year but I can imagine what you got because they're not doing a good job on anything lately. Recently I got from amazon 2 bags of gluten-free granola cereal (wife has Celiac Disease, hence no gluten) and a smartphone case. They threw all 3 in a H-U-G-E box with like maybe 3 tiny air bags that did absolutely nothing. The 3 flew around inside the box during handling and the phone case further pulverized the cereal into dust. You don't have to have a PhD in physics have a basic and working understanding of mass, inertia and box size to realize what poor packing can and will do to its contents.

And IMO, they have used COVID-19 as an excuse to delay shipping on items listed as Prime and pocket the savings. Items I received in 2 days now take a week. I'm still paying for Prime but I'll wager they are not paying UPS, FedEx and USPS what they did before.

I like amazon's selection and prices and the quick shipping used to put them over the top...one more episode and I figure I drop the hammer and drop Prime. Yeah, I know....Bezos won't miss me, but I was doing fine before amazon, I'll be OK without them. I bought over $25K from newegg from 2006 to 2013 so I might just go back to them for my electronic items anyway.

 

[CYANiDE]

I started buying Seagate Skyhawk drives since I've had some more issues recently with WD Purple. People seem to think that you may be getting refurbs or similar from Amazon and I'm inclined to agree.

 

[AAAAAR0N]

Hi Guys,
Just bought a new WD purple 4TB on Amazon and it seems it is dead.
Already looked everywhere for a fix and could not find. I will return it and ask for a refund, but due to this Corona crises the post offices are not working 100% (which is ok of course).
So I decided to share this, so maybe one of you guys already had the same issue in the past.
So connecting by SATA internally and the unit is not recognized. Initially I thought it could be a problem with my dell (Bios limited) so I swap on HDD from another computer and inserted the WD purple. Dead.
Followed the WD instruction to start windows disk management and there I could see the expected scennario and that I would have to initiate the disk (see attachment). But unfortunately it returns an error when creating the partition.
Even tried to connect via USB3.0 with an adaptor and got the same result. Also run a tool that was able to write but not delete and provide a partition error.
Does anyone disagree it is dead?

So the question is. Was this bad luck? I'm afraid to replace it for a new WD purple again.
Does anyone recomend other HDD or can back it up that this was a rare case?
Didn't like so much about these reviews:

Was inclined to go for a seagate Skyhawk, but then also read some bad comments here in this forum.

Please share...

Thanks in advance
Badriver

I realize this is years after your issue, but I wanted to add to the thread, hoping that I may help you, or anyone else.

IF the HDD you purchased was used, I will suggest that the reason you couldnt get into it was because it had been formatted to a surveillance recording system. Maybe 10 years ago, I had the same issue, with a surveillance drive that I wanted to use for space. I eventually found out that in order to wipe the drive, you had to have the power connected to the the surveillance unit, and data to your desktop/laptop. The drive would never spin up unless it was connected to that units power. It also seems like I had to jumper a certain way, but cant remember.
Once I got in, and wiped everything, it was basically a new drive, albeit used XX hours.

I hope this helps somebody.

 

[tech_junkie]

I started buying Seagate Skyhawk drives since I've had some more issues recently with WD Purple. People seem to think that you may be getting refurbs or similar from Amazon and I'm inclined to agree.

I buy my drives from Newegg and never from the internet flea market Amazon because you don't know what you are getting and from who.