Frederick Bruckman wrote:
> On Sun, 17 Aug 2003, walt wrote:
> 
> 
>>I have an older WDC WD450AA which has gone bad on three different
>>occasions and recovered each time -- but very slowly.
>>
>>Each time the disk remained bad for weeks or months -- it was
>>only a secondary disk so I was too lazy to yank it.
>>
>>I've concluded after three episodes that turning the power off
>>was the event that triggered the recovery.
> 
> 
> I had a WD 80gb that would silently write erroneous data whenever it
> got hot. After significant activity, archives or large files that I'd
> just copied to it would fail their checksums, and fail the comparison
> with the originals. I never detected any errors after the data was
> (finally) correctly written. I now avoid that brand like the plague.

Interesting.  I have another WD (30GB) disk which clearly does suffer
from overheating during vigorous activity.  In fact I can hear a
'klunk' from a mechanical relay which seems to be a thermal cutout
and the disk is useless until I power it down for 20 minutes or so
to let it cool off.  Needless to say I don't depend on it!

I also have two newer WD 80 GB drives which work fine, so I'm hoping
that WD has improved their drives in the last few years.  The prices
have dropped so low I'm amazed that the drives work at all.

Which brand do you prefer?