I have got 2 Dell computers in last week that both had HDD failed. Guess what... they are Wester Digital! lol

 

Western digital is just a brand name. Im not sure if they manufacture their own or not, but they are one of the better quality drives. I know I've had trouble with Dell drives, I posted earlier in this thread.

 

Wester Digital does manufacture there own drives as does Seagate. Dell does put WD drives in there computers because of a contract.

 

Need help. Cant pull my pictures off the raid drives in slave mode because I dont have permission to access that STUPID folder.

Now dont jump up and down saying that was dumb of me, I do have them backed up on the network drive, but it takes 6 hours to transfer that way... I think internally I have double the read/write speed, so yeah, I think I wanna do it this way.

 

Nevermind, Have to manually go into that particular user folder and share it instead of just using the drive as shared.

 

When they crap out, you can usually still read as an external. I've pulled info and pics from a few that way.

But I've always use Max or SG's. Seagate has the good programs for their drives and the Maxtors. Recently, a friend was in sort of a pinch and I had to try a new WD 160, -because that's what she purchased . The Western Digital worked awesomely. It came with software and I had to Image thru another program, but it took right over and eventually booted up into an EXACT copy, didn't loose anything. It took awhile to write because I did everything thru USB, but yea, it's still running great for that person.

 

^ USB externals suck! External SATA is the only way to go!!

 

Yea, I have a SATA connect, but most old HD's don't. So I connect serial ATA or ATAPI/IDE via USB to transfer/migrate without opening the comp. Less work, plug and play walk away, come back later, she's ready.

There's others on this site that will probably chime in Klitch, to help as well. This procedure doesn't always go as planned, so far the best way I've done this is from a Disc Image or ISO file. You need a good program that will create one correctly first. For most of my quick and easy software that's free I go here -

http://www.techsupportalert.com/