WD20EARX questions

[Serville]

I just got WD20EARX as a replacement for my broken WD20EAR.

I have 3 questions about this drive:

1. Does this new drive have the same high load cycle count problem like my older WD20EARS ?

2. Does WDIDLE3 program work on this new drive ?

3. Since this is  a new  advanced disk format , can I still use older utilities like MBRWizard, MBRTool to back up the MBR ? Are they compatible with 4k-sector hdd ?

THanks

[Serville]

anyone please ?

[jigzat]

I have the exact same question, I've been looking arround and I read some official post that claimed that one should only use wdidle3 with the specified drives but the WD20EARX is nowhere in the list. I also read in some other post that this model suffers from the same and that basically every WD does. I my case I think I'm going to install the HD in my hard computer and test it my self. I do beleive that this is a good hard drive though and it can work as a main drive but one has to deal with a little slowness. In any case I have seen some benchmarks and and it behaves fine except in two tests.

[Phlyer]

sorry I cant help you with your queries guys, i just hope your drive lasts longer than mine.  Bought one in october last year as a replacement for my slave drive, it took me nearly 6 weeks to get the **bleep** thing to work, and WD support were as much use as a wet paper bag, it died on me yesterday.  totally unrecognised by the PC, unable to be accessed by anything.  theres about 200gb data on it all gone into the ether.  Yes I have backups for about 80% but i certainly expect a seemingly good drive like this to last more than 5 months, especially when the drive it was supposed to replace is 5 or 6 years old and is still going strong, and my boot drive is even older.  Maxtors rule in this house.. 

phl

[jigzat]

Sorry to hear that, in my case I basically have everything backed up on DVDs (Tons of it) since I have had HDD failures in the past even with Seagates and Samsungs so I learned my lesson. I have the external HDD just for convenience. Lets see how it behaves. I used to have a Lacie and it failed within a year being sitted on my desk.