I have read that thread. In fact, I recently helped a friend buy 10x3TB drives. We had zero failures. In fact, if you look at the WD30EZRX(the drives my friend bought) and the WD30EFRX(WD Reds) the WD30EZRX has a higher percentage of 1 egg reviews and the WD Reds have a higher percentage of 5 eggs. So I'd expect to have more failures from a shipment of WD30EXRX than the WD Reds. If you look around, you'll see lots of people all over the place with multiple drive failures in a single shipment. WD wouldn't be in business if they were continually shipping out bad drives. Getting back bad drives from a retailer is quite expensive(more expensive than an RMA).
So I still stand by my comment that it was more than likely a fluke. All of the drives on all brands have people that bought X drives and had a very high failure rate. In fact, when my friend bought his 10 drive I was expecting at least 2 failures and as many as 5 failures based on the feedback from Newegg and Amazon. I figured that best case we'd see just 1 failure. Imagine my surprise when i had zero failures out of 10 despite all of the bad reviews.
Not to mention, people will complain FAR more than they will praise. I haven't written a review about how awesome my 10 drives are and that they are all in good condition with zero problems. I don't plan to since I didn't do the purchasing either.
My view on reviews... they are a great indication of potential problems you may experience. If everyone is complaining about a firmware issue or other specific issue then you should worry. But complaining that you bought 10 drives and 8 were bad out of the box doesn't say that WD sucks. I promise you that if I dropped your box out of the truck you'd get a bunch of bad drives regardless of what brand you have. Except the average person will also immediately assume WD must suck. Check out Seagates, they don't fare much better. In fact, the highest reviewed 3TB drive(which also happens to be have the highest reviewed ranking) http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148844 has only a 45% 5 egg score and an "astoundingly low" 23% 1 egg score. While I'd gladly assume that means a 23% failure rate of those that reviewed(who would say their drive works flawlessly and then give it 1 egg?) I also can't believe for a second that roughly 23% of hard drives shipped by Seagate are DoA.
At the end of the day, believe what you want. Its your data you are trusting with the drives. I'll make my best decision with all available knowledge just as I'm sure you will. We just come to different conclusions based on the information presented. Neither one is wrong for our opinion...
