More likely, WD had a shortage of Green drives for their USB enclosures because those 2TB Black drives cost more to make, having 4 platters instead of the 3. I believe if WD wanted to get rid of lower quality HDs, instead of selling them as externals they'd use them as warranty replacements, especially for warranties that were about to expire.
Sounds reasonable. Though, wouldn't a replacement drive be subject to
the same kind of warranty as the one it's replacing? I know in
Denmark, there's a warranty on repairs, for instance, and this
warranty will keep renewing itself if the product fails again within
that period. Don't know how it is with replacements, though. Seems
fair that a new product should always carry with it the full warranty,
regardless of it being a replacement. But I guess it depends on how
it's defined in the first place - if you don't promise people to get
new drives if an old one fails within warranty, then I guess you could
worm your way around it
Also when I've run MHDD, a program that reports slow sectors, the WD drives I tested showed no sectors slower than 50ms, while the Hitachi, Samsung, and Seagate drives had some sectors that took 50-150ms and, 1-10 that took 150-500ms. Hitachi 1TB 7200RPM drives had none of the latter. 150ms is 13-18 rotations. I don't know if the results were due to inferior heads or signal processing, more defects on the platters, or lower standards for screening out bad sectors. MHDD is available at HDDguru.com, whichhas forums full of HD experts who may be able to tell you if external drives are built from inferior internals.
Thank you - I'll check it out. The program also, even though it'll
have to run on my gaming rig - that's the only Windows installation I
own. Btw, and sorry if I'm just being uneducated on the program there,
couldn't those numbers just be because the WD didn't have any bad
sectors that needed reallocation when you tested, while the other ones
did?
But at least those chip companies label their products according to speed, voltage, and maximum temperature. OTOH memory modules sold on the retail market seem to vary widely in quality and are usually made from sub-prime or overclocked chips. One example of this is shown in the following APHnetworks review of a G.Skill PC17000 Ripjaws module. Once the heatsinkswere removed, Hynix PC10666 chips are revealed:
http://aphnetworks.com/reviews/g_skill_ripjaws_f3_12800cl7d_8gbrh_2x4...
G.Skill is hardly alone in this practice. Module companies vary greatly in quality standards. Some test using US $1M+ machines, while most usejust PC motherboards running at room temperature. At least one company even thinks it's OK for its modules to show 2 bad bits during such testing. For these and other reasons, it's best to buy modules only if they haveno heatsinks (useless anyway) and contain chips clearly marked with the logo or part number of a real chip manufacturer. About the only way to be guaranteed of such modules if you don't visit the store is to buy Samsung or no-heatsink Crucial modules. Some people have reported that Samsung PC12800 modules can run faster than some heatsinked PC17000 modules. BTW, 1.35V DDR3 is rated to work in 1.5V motherboards.
Very true. I seem to remember, when I bought my latest high-clocked
modules that I was kind of frustrated about not being able to run them
within regular voltages. If not activating overclocking and manually
going into the "unsafe" voltage range, they'd only run at a step or
two below their rated performance. When I inspected that, I found out
that pretty much 0 products in the high ranges aren't overclocked and
then "certified" for that speed. And seeing as the denominations
they're given aren't standard ones, e.g. PC17000 isn't a standardized
denomination, they can also tell you to over-volt your system to get
there. Guess that would be pruning for the best apples. And I don't
mind over-volting so long as it is within warranty. Or do I... Not
sure. If 1 year warranty suddenly means they'll burn to death at 1½
years due to overvolting, instead of after 10 years with a regular
volt setting, then of course I do mind.
