Surf: first of all i feel your pain but really it is driven by us the consumer.
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I'm no HDD guru but I feel a little closer to being one after:
This is usually the main cause of a consumers trouble: experimentation.
Heath Robinson (macgyver?) solutions are all well and good in old tech like cars with no computer or hacking the sunday dinner, first aid halfway up a mountain with no doctor. They have no place in critical situations where others can provide g'teed pro help.
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* The USB Mini-B port on my 1.5TB WD MyBook Essential drive had been dodgy for the last year, progressively getting worse until a week ago it no longer worked inside the enclosure and the dodgy port required closer inspection;
You mean you watched this shit happen and too no action for a ****ing year?
Do you wait a year when your car goes wrong and then blame the garage for the ludicrous bill?
Did you then come home and take the car to bits?
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* I removed the drive from the enclosure, removed the controller board
So Mr-close -to-Guru, how much have you invested in ESD protection?
ESD floor? Bench? ...... Wrist strap? i'm taking a random guess at zero as most punters will ask : "wtf is ESD ?"
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inserted it into my new $119 docking station
Maybe trawl a few (reputable) DR equipment gear sites and you may realise that $100 is nothing by comparison.
Even rudimentary imaging gear will start at between 3 and 4 thousand depending on which options you choose.
More capable gear will easily double that price. not including proper PSU / UPS protection, ancillary equipment etc etc
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but ultimately realised the job might be beyond me
Can you imagine a dentist/surgeon/DRpro getting to this stage, patient opened up on a table?
If you think pro repair is expensive try the true cost of amateur repair.
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the "sticky-tape-and-two-boxes-fix" 5/6ths unsuccessful...but 1/6th successful!;
before you gripe over price can you imagine *any* business running at under 20% success rate ?
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(a) First and foremost, these dodgy USB ports, and everything that's dodgy today;
Consumer driven:
Customers want bigger faster cheaper. How do you think the cost savings are made?
Any company touting Quality with any significant price increase over a competitor will lose out in an economy driven market.
Want quality/stability? go back to SCSI; the weight of a brick, the capacity of a matchbox and the price of a used car.
You will pay extra for Enterprise solution. These are designed and tested run at a much higher duty cycle.
Worst case min/max? ppl buying a "bargain" $200 plasticky netbook with crappy 2.5 drive, downloading the world on a fragmented drive, sat on a fluffy vent blocking cushion eating snacks and slurping drink, running movies and having firefox eat up all the memory with more than just a few open tabs.
Oh and i run my business from it too: "Disaster Recipes R Us"
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(b) Second, I don't know which average every day user who buys these drives from the local Officeworks for personal use really needs AES-encryption for 'their own privacy & data security needs';
Consumer driven:
You, and anyone else that bought into it, obviously. No one forced you to buy the drive.
Do you also believe the shit on car ads that show a CEO on his way to an important company meet, in torrential rain, driving at max speed and swerving to avoid a fluffy kitten with the skill and finesse of a Finn in a World Championshop Rally? "Its' ok guys, Dave is driving the new wupeehookingdo360Z all terrain - He'll make it!"
No: it's marketing BS and we all know it.
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(c) On visits to newegg.com and eBay I find refurbished WD HDDs for sale;
Consumer driven:
If folks insist on buying used crap, there will always be a business there to fulfil the demand.
Even seen ppl (visitors not gurus) on here asking how to repair half dead drives to survive just a few more weeks in order to make a sale.
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(d) In this thread I reed about 'proprietary solutions';
Well to stay in business companies need to turn profit.
read: I bought into this shit now i need *you* to fix it: oh you need a proprie... wait-a-g-d-minute...
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Solder:He said he could but he didn't want to. Ok, thanks...
Consumer driven.
Local/small tech businesses may employ "jusrisprudence" to jobs. If you ripped the cable, what other shit did you do that you aren't telling.
Owner has to balance the likelihood of a customer trying to shift blame on to him, him inadvertently screwing up, leaving the client in an *alleged* worse state than he came in and risking getting his ass sued off in a consumer driven "compensation claim" society.
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My guess is the data recovery agent doesn't want to solder the port back on either.
Guess again. A Pro company cannot do a job by halves. If they do, they risk losing reputation by quoting on the basis of what *You* think the problem is and increasing the quote as they find that
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* ...before knocking the cable and severing the last molecule of solder
you did even more damage like ripping the track/joint/whatever.
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is WD the only company I have to steer clear of to avoid this happening again?
No: every company has to turn a profit even if it means manufacturing demand: go figure.
Avoid everyone or at least make sure you keep you end of the deal by taking preventative measures.
Don't sit watching something or someone slowly die in front of your eyes and then cry over it if you had the slightest chance to look after it yourself.
Hard drives : pah!
Look at the shit companies sell you to eat: perfectly shaped, nutrition free, _cheap_ crap -> rampant obesity, health problems, hospital bills. As one dude on TED put "more ppl are dying of Drive-Thru's than Drive By's"
It's everywhere dude. If you let life Suck - it will.
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Please note, I probably know nothing, these are just the stupid conclusions I come to sometimes and I needed to rant, for obvious reasons.
Me too.
It's cold outside and i much prefer ignoring the dogs needs to sit here typing.. uuuh hang on ...
btw would you like fries with that?
Have a nice day
K