Western Digital Purple 4TB HDD Deal (Expires at 11:59PM PT on 8/29/17)

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Probird79

Getting the hang of it
Aug 23, 2017
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DavidDavid said:
Good deal. Beats the $134 Amazon has had it at for the last year or so since I bought mine...
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I was actually about to purchase through Amazon after past days of trying to find the best deal. I googled the part number to check one last time and the Newegg link popped up. Then again there will probably be more deals (Labor Day weekend) since this country likes to monetize every holiday and make up their own (Black Friday).
 
I bought 4 8TB WD purples when building my new system two months ago. all four of the WD drives were garbage. Three of them made sounds as if the head was scratching across the disk upon initial boot, then stopped spinning all together. One of the drives was recognized by windows, but when I went to format and initialize it, it stopped responding.

I returned all four of them and bought 8x 4TB Seagate Skyhawk drives instead. Zero issues with the Seagate drives.

I will never buy WD hard drives again because of this. WD responded to my one star amazon review as if it was my misfortune that I had to return these drives. If you look around you can see that WD purple drive failure is pretty common.

the build dates on the drives were from this year, April and May, they were all not of the same batch.
 
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Bokeh said:
I bought 4 8TB WD purples when building my new system two months ago. all four of the WD drives were garbage. Three of them made sounds as if the head was scratching across the disk upon initial boot, then stopped spinning all together. One of the drives was recognized by windows, but when I went to format and initialize it, it stopped responding.

I returned all four of them and bought 8x 4TB Seagate Skyhawk drives instead. Zero issues with the Seagate drives.

I will never buy WD hard drives again because of this. WD responded to my one star amazon review as if it was my misfortune that I had to return these drives. If you look around you can see that WD purple drive failure is pretty common.

the build dates on the drives were from this year, April and May, they were all not of the same batch.
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Well that's disconcerting... The reviews I've seen between the two are pretty much identical with WD having 10X the amount of reviews.

Which model number's did you have?
 
Wow all 4..that's unusual.. I use them all the time. I have not used the 8TB as of yet.
 
Probird79 said:
Well that's disconcerting... The reviews I've seen between the two are pretty much identical with WD having 10X the amount of reviews.

Which model number's did you have?
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They were WD80PURZ - I read somewhere that the puzx and purz are basically the same, it's just that the purz was made to be marketed in the US

Yeah, WD is definitely the more popular choice, they're a bigger company, they advertise more, etc.. If you scan through reviews, you can see problems like I had happens regularly to people in various hard drive sizes. Some it happens right away as did mine, and many more happen with a year of ownership.
 
Bokeh said:
Yeah, WD is definitely the more popular choice, they're a bigger company, they advertise more, etc.. If you scan through reviews, you can see problems like I had happens regularly to people in various hard drive sizes. Some it happens right away as did mine, and many more happen with a year of ownership.
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Oh definitely, I know that's why there are more reviews for WD. I'm implying still, statistically, the ratings are the same (i.e. proportional to the same failure rate) even with WD having 10X the sample size. It would be nice if each company published failure rates for their drives...
 
Probird79 said:
Oh definitely, I know that's why there are more reviews for WD. I'm implying still, statistically, the ratings are the same (i.e. proportional to the same failure rate) even with WD having 10X the sample size. It would be nice if each company published failure rates for their drives...
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I disagree.

have a look for yourself

here's the Seagate Skyhawk reviews for verified buyers on amazon, all drive sizes(137):
Amazon.com: Customer reviews: Seagate SkyHawk 4TB Surveillance Hard Drive - SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache 3.5-Inch Internal Drive (ST4000VX007)

and here is the WD purple verified buyer reviews, all drive sizes(1250):
Amazon.com: Customer reviews: WD Purple 6TB Surveillance Hard Disk Drive - 5400 RPM Class SATA 6 Gb/s 64MB Cache 3.5 Inch - WD60PURZ

It's pretty obvious Western Digital Purple failure rates are much higher than Seagate Skyhawk
 
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My experience says Seagate HDDs fail more than Western Digital. I fix computers since the 90s and replaced dozens of Seagate HDDs, only a few of WDs. Only a few of them were made for surveillance.
Generally i avoid Seagates, no matter how cheap they are.
 
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Bokeh said:
Taking what you are implying, I should have not ran into more than a couple failure reviews for WD in the first 10 or so pages, I ran into that many failure reviews in the first page alone.
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Not true, you should see many more failure reviews for WD since there are 10X more reviews. So proportionally you should see 20-30 failures (10x2-3) for WD and you should HEAR/SEE proportionally that many more through forums, word of mouth, websites, etc. Scientifically you would have to count each failure over all of the reviews. This is all a rough way to look at it though. We are still looking at such a small sample size compared to all HDD purchased and we don't know if any of the reviews are fake.

Also, what you hear/see is anecdotal. Many more people speak up if a failure happens than they do when non-failures happens (especially reviews). Case in point, when do you read a thread on a forum that praises a HDD? All you hear about are failures (and that goes with any product). In the end we need the companies data for true numbers and not use anecdotal reasoning.

We are primitive animals and likewise are our thoughts. I would have the EXACT same feeling as you do. Even if the true numbers came out and WD's had much better failure rates and I went through your experience I would still fell the same, hence the primitive thoughts.

Disclaimer: I'm unbiased and not supporting either company. I, like you, have to rely on anecdotal evidence since we don't have true numbers. I built a new computer a few years ago and use both brands (along with a Samsung SSD). I will say that MY personal research has lead me to believe WD is superior to Seagate. Does it not make you wonder why these companies don't publish their data???
 
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Bokeh said:
I bought 4 8TB WD purples when building my new system two months ago. all four of the WD drives were garbage.
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Were they bought on-line?
How well were they packed?
With all 4 (or was it just 2?) failed there is likely to be a common factor other than manufacturing defects.
Maybe a delivery driver with a cannon, or a packer with the shakes.
 
I do not buy any hard drives from Amazon...try BH-Photo and get it in a retail box and you will be happy. Amazon sells too much junk anymore.
 
Amazon requests WD to repackage the drives to be placed in frustration-free brown boxes. Otherwise, the product is exactly the same, whether you get it in a brown box or retail packaging. When I purchased drives earlier this year, they all had date of manufacturing in the year 2017, loaded with the latest firmware.

Tinman said:
I do not buy any hard drives from Amazon...try BH-Photo and get it in a retail box and you will be happy. Amazon sells too much junk anymore.
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Arjun said:
Amazon requests WD to repackage the drives to be placed in frustration-free brown boxes. Otherwise, the product is exactly the same, whether you get it in a brown box or retail packaging. When I purchased drives earlier this year, they all had date of manufacturing in the year 2017, loaded with the latest firmware.
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You can buy your drives where ever you want. I just do not buy from Amazon due to my past experience with them. I think they are rough with whatever they ship. Sure they will take it back, but it is very frustrating to wait for something to arrive damaged and then hassle with the return...no thanks.
 
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