That has been my experience (and conclusion) too with WD - it does seem very much like it has been engineered for planned obsolescence. That's why I chose to buy from their competitor this year. Consumers though have less and less option today as WD has already gobbled up the others and now there are only 3 major ones left - Seagate, Toshiba and WD. The other alternative is flash drives, but price and data recovery is a big issue with it that holds me back from fully switching to it.