Feklar:
Wrong, in nearly everything. People, geeks included, will buy whatever is cheapest. No amount of boycotting will change the market. WD products come out already after many months in development, and the consumers usage, needs or anything else are not considered too much. what is considered is "is it reliable 'enough' to sell at a price cheap enough so the people will mostly chose it over one of the competitiors.

The amount of people taking apart their HDDs and doing the switcheroo you mentioned, IMHO, would be in the 0.some-odd percent. they sell Millions of drives. individual issues a few customers have is an acceptable number to not matter.

It makes perfect sence to combine the board, why have a sata connector only to hook into a sata recepticle, when the drive is USB?

The WD encryption between the bridge and the HDD, thats a differnt story

All I know is that I will never buy one, and will never advise anyone else to buy one, as long as there are SATA/USB alternatives.

It deprives me of the use of too many recovery tools and other HD swapping options and endangers my backup capabilities, and I will never advise anyone else to buy one. If 2000 other computer repair shops believe and do the same, WD will suffer greatly.

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http://www.youtube.com/user/TerraformingMaster

Regarding original topic, taking into account what I posted as first reply, It would be interesting if you are ever able to find the root cause of it, and provide definitive proof that it is the culprit.
Otherwise my advice would seem appropriate.
cheers & good luck

Thanks Feklar and HaQue,



I prefer Linux ... anyone ?



With "Data Lifeguard Diagnostic for Windows"
Low level and SMART - errors.



Another tool?

Neuron