Thailand floods and Seagate HD prices

  • Thread starter Thread starter Percival P. Cassidy
  • Start date Start date
Franc Zabkar said:
On 6 Nov 2011 12:32:52 GMT, Arno <[email protected]> put finger to
keyboard and composed:
Click to expand...
In the case of a modern HDD, the usual result is a shorted 5V TVS
(Transient Voltage Suppression) diode. The PSU should then shut down.
Click to expand...
Lots of examples here:
http://www.users.on.net/~fzabkar/HDD/
Click to expand...

Indeed. Though in an intentional manipulation to make the
drive die within hours when on normal SATA power, the TVS
would be removed of course.

Not that I say this is what happened here. Far too many lies get
posted on the Internet. For example, it is entirely possible this
guy had a defective PSU that killed all 3 drives and failed to
mention that. Or these drives were without warranty because the
seller knew they had been dropped. It is also possible that
he then cooked up this story himself for some sort of misguided
"revenge" on WD. Or these drives were without warranty,
because the seller knew they were dropped.

Anyways, unless I see at least PCB photograph detailed enough that
I can verify the claim, I am going to assume it is nonsense.

Arno
 
A few weeks ago 2TB Seagate Barracuda XT bare drives were $130 at
NewEgg; by the end of last week they were $250. But on Saturday I bought
the retail version of the same drive at the Chicago-area Fry's for $160
(limit one per customer).

Two weeks ago I bought a retail-package 2TB Barracuda LP at Best Buy for
$100; this week the regular price is shown as $90, and they are on sale
for $75 -- and they do price adjustments within 30 days. NewEgg no
longer lists them.

Those drives are all made in China, but I think that some components or
sub-assemblies come from the flood-affected factories in Thailand.
Click to expand...

The 2TB Barracuda XT is $330 at NewEgg today (limit one per customer).

Perce
 
For basically all intents and purposes, forget about this scenario.
Even if true, it is extremely unlike to hit you, i.e. far, far
less likely than a new drive dying of its own in the first few hours.
Click to expand...

I kind of wanted to be able to take it out and use it in a desktop if I
wanted to. Any thoughts?

--
Ed Light

Better World News TV Channel:
http://realnews.com

Iraq Veterans Against the War and Related:
http://ivaw.org
http://couragetoresist.org
http://antiwar.com

Send spam to the FTC at
(e-mail address removed)
Thanks, robots.
 
Not that I say this is what happened here. Far too many lies get
posted on the Internet. ....

Anyways, unless I see at least PCB photograph detailed enough that
I can verify the claim, I am going to assume it is nonsense.
Click to expand...

I'll copy some WD support messages into this post.

I said:
Customer (Edmund Light) 01/02/2011 09:17 PM
Re taking the hard drive out of the enclosure and using it in a desktop:
It's an EAVS, and on the net I've seen that this kills them, due to the
drive being made for external use and not expecting 12 volts, or not
adjusting to 12V as designed and needing a tweak at WD after it breaks.

Could I rewire a SATA power plug to run it ok? How would I wire it? IE,
run 5V to the 12V? Cut the 12V? Leave the 5V? Cut the 3.3V? Etc....

Thanks.

WD said, over several posts:

in some cases, the drives inside our enclosures may use custom
connections which would not work with a standard SATA or EIDE connection.

we have no information on how to dismantle any of our external drives
to repurpose the drive inside the enclosure for use as an internal
drive. The reason why is that we build our external drives with the
intention that it would function as single unit but not as independent
parts. Additionally, we do not guarantee that we will use any specific
model drive inside the enclosure. Please note that many of our external
drives no longer use an EIDE or SATA drive inside and are now USB-only.

I apologize but we have no information on how to extract the
WD10EAVS-00D7B0 from the enclosure to see if it is even possible to
connect to a regular SATA controller.

--
Ed Light

Better World News TV Channel:
http://realnews.com

Iraq Veterans Against the War and Related:
http://ivaw.org
http://couragetoresist.org
http://antiwar.com

Send spam to the FTC at
(e-mail address removed)
Thanks, robots.
 
I'll copy some WD support messages into this post.

I said:
Customer (Edmund Light) 01/02/2011 09:17 PM
Re taking the hard drive out of the enclosure and using it in a desktop:
It's an EAVS, and on the net I've seen that this kills them, due to the
drive being made for external use and not expecting 12 volts, or not
adjusting to 12V as designed and needing a tweak at WD after it breaks.

Could I rewire a SATA power plug to run it ok? How would I wire it? IE,
run 5V to the 12V? Cut the 12V? Leave the 5V? Cut the 3.3V? Etc....

Thanks.

WD said, over several posts:

in some cases, the drives inside our enclosures may use custom
connections which would not work with a standard SATA or EIDE connection.
Click to expand...

The person is just reading from a script!

we have no information on how to dismantle any of our external drives
to repurpose the drive inside the enclosure for use as an internal
drive. The reason why is that we build our external drives with the
intention that it would function as single unit but not as independent
parts. Additionally, we do not guarantee that we will use any specific
model drive inside the enclosure. Please note that many of our external
drives no longer use an EIDE or SATA drive inside and are now USB-only.
Click to expand...

In other words they will not tell you how to or support voiding the warranty
I apologize but we have no information on how to extract the
WD10EAVS-00D7B0 from the enclosure to see if it is even possible to
connect to a regular SATA controller.
Click to expand...
It is possible, as for it to even be called a SATA drive and bear that spec
and name, it has to follow the standards.
 
Ed Light said:
On 11/7/2011 2:53 AM, Arno wrote:
Click to expand...
I'll copy some WD support messages into this post.
Click to expand...
I said:
Customer (Edmund Light) 01/02/2011 09:17 PM
Re taking the hard drive out of the enclosure and using it in a desktop:
It's an EAVS, and on the net I've seen that this kills them, due to the
drive being made for external use and not expecting 12 volts, or not
adjusting to 12V as designed and needing a tweak at WD after it breaks.
Click to expand...
Could I rewire a SATA power plug to run it ok? How would I wire it? IE,
run 5V to the 12V? Cut the 12V? Leave the 5V? Cut the 3.3V? Etc....

WD said, over several posts:
Click to expand...
in some cases, the drives inside our enclosures may use custom
connections which would not work with a standard SATA or EIDE connection.
Click to expand...
we have no information on how to dismantle any of our external drives
to repurpose the drive inside the enclosure for use as an internal
drive. The reason why is that we build our external drives with the
intention that it would function as single unit but not as independent
parts. Additionally, we do not guarantee that we will use any specific
model drive inside the enclosure. Please note that many of our external
drives no longer use an EIDE or SATA drive inside and are now USB-only.
Click to expand...
I apologize but we have no information on how to extract the
WD10EAVS-00D7B0 from the enclosure to see if it is even possible to
connect to a regular SATA controller.
Click to expand...


Basically: "... we have no clue ... we have no information ...
things may not work...".

A non-statement mixed with FUD.

Chances are it will work fine.

There is another power issue though, and that one is real:
Power management. If the drive stops several times a minute,
it will die within months. There is a WD utility to turn
power-management off, as it seems normal ATA commands do not
work. And indeed, I missed that on the first disk I removed
from an USB enclosure (500GB WD AADS) and only caught it when
the disk was at 200'000 load cycles. For the second one
(WD 1TB EAVS) I fixed that immediately and never had any
issues. Both drives are in my main machine at this very
moment.

The utility is apparently not advertized for the EAVS (somebody
here posted a very helpful link, don't remember who it was, thanks
again!). The file is wdidle3_1_05.zip and google finds it here:

http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=609&sid=113

If you treat your disk with that, there should be no power
management issues either. Although you should maybe check
with a SMART tool after a few days of operation.

Arno
 
Ed Light said:
On 11/6/2011 4:32 AM, Arno wrote:
Click to expand...
I kind of wanted to be able to take it out and use it in a desktop if I
wanted to. Any thoughts?
Click to expand...

Do it. Fix the power management with wdidle3 as in my other response
and it should work fine.

Arno
 
Krypsis said:
Seagate is well and truly off my radar now!
Click to expand...

All drive makers turn out a turkey from time to time. To write off
Seagate forever on the basis of one bad 'un is daft.
 
GMAN said:
Thats my exact point. Drives should not just drop out of a raid array for no
reason.
Click to expand...

They do though, even enterprise models (I've seen it on enterprise SCSI
models used in arrays). Probably controller board failure.
 
Mike Tomlinson wrote
All drive makers turn out a turkey from time to time. To
write off Seagate forever on the basis of one bad 'un is daft.
Click to expand...

Particularly now that its one of the last two remaining
and WD which is the other one has even bigger problems.
 
Customer (Edmund Light) 01/02/2011 09:17 PM
Re taking the hard drive out of the enclosure and using it in a desktop:
It's an EAVS, and on the net I've seen that this kills them, due to the
drive being made for external use and not expecting 12 volts, or not
adjusting to 12V as designed and needing a tweak at WD after it breaks.

Could I rewire a SATA power plug to run it ok? How would I wire it? IE,
run 5V to the 12V? Cut the 12V? Leave the 5V? Cut the 3.3V? Etc....

Thanks.

WD said, over several posts:

in some cases, the drives inside our enclosures may use custom
connections which would not work with a standard SATA or EIDE connection.
Click to expand...

People have uploaded numerous internal photos to WD's forums, both
publicly and privately, and I have yet to see a 3.5" drive that wasn't
a standard SATA or PATA model. Of course I haven't seen everything ...

That said, the 3.5" My Book Essentials and 2.5" Passports incorporate
128-bit AES hardware encryption, whether or not the user sets a
password. A bridge chip (eg Initio INIC-1607E) on a separate USB-SATA
bridge board handles the encryption and decryption. If the user
bypasses the bridge and connects such a drive directly to a SATA port
on a computer motherboard, then the data will appear as gibberish.

Of course, a user could still reuse such a drive by repartitioning and
reformatting it.
we have no information on how to dismantle any of our external drives
to repurpose the drive inside the enclosure for use as an internal
drive. The reason why is that we build our external drives with the
intention that it would function as single unit but not as independent
parts. Additionally, we do not guarantee that we will use any specific
model drive inside the enclosure. Please note that many of our external
drives no longer use an EIDE or SATA drive inside and are now USB-only.
Click to expand...

Some of the port powered 2.5" USB externals incorporate the USB-SATA
bridge on the drive's PCB.

This [very long] thread discusses WD's USB-only WD10TMVV model:
http://forum.hddguru.com/wd10tmvv-t16204.html

Here is a thread where "Gaucho" has reverse engineered one of these
"SmartWare" drives:
http://forum.hddguru.com/disk-with-sata-usb-adapter-remove-virtual-rom-t18492.html

This article explains how to convert a USB-only drive to SATA:
http://www.datarecoverytools.co.uk/...-western-digital-drives-with-hd-doctor-suite/

- Franc Zabkar
 
Franc Zabkar said:
Some of the port powered 2.5" USB externals incorporate the USB-SATA
bridge on the drive's PCB.
Click to expand...

Well, makes sense if they carnk out enough of them.

Arno
 
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