Confused and upset about Western Digital

Hi,

I have used only Western Digital hard drives since '92, and I've never lost one. I've seen Maxtor's go. Quantum's go. But never a WD.

I'm looking for a new drive now, and I've been reading the reviews of some of the larger WD drives (120GB, 250GB). I'm absolutely shocked at what I see. Reports of drive failures after 3 weeks. 6 months. http://reviews.cnet.com/Western_Digital_Ca…48.html?tag=tab

Has WD quality really deteriorated this much? What’s going on here???

Thanks

Check "MTBF" numbers:

- http://www.smartcomputing.com/editorial/ar…rddrivesbuy.asp
"…MTBF (mean time between failures), and the higher the number, the better. Most EIDE drives have an MTBF of 400,000 hours, and some SCSI drives go as high as 1.2 million hours. If the drive's MTBF is measured in start/stop cycles, you'll find 40,000 to 50,000 is pretty standard…"

…maybe you were just "lucky".