Technical > Computer Hardware Help > [hard drive] Concerned about HDD health

reply to Krisnatharok

Re: [hard drive] Concerned about HDD health

Sorry about the plethora of screenshots. I took three pictures of each drive before and after zeroing, as well as speed tests of the Samsung I am using for backup, my OCZ boot drive, and then the fresh RAID 0 array after I put the two Caviar Blacks back into raid.

Both of the WD6401AALS drives are covered under warranty until March 2014 (bought when WD was still offering a 5 year warranty on them).

The computer has been mostly online for the past 42 months, which explains the high power-on hours.

Thanks for the final recommendation!
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If we lose this freedom of ours, history will record with the greatest astonishment, those who had the most to lose, did the least to prevent its happening.

Ahh yes, you got lucky with the 5-year-warranty then! Great!

Yeah, RMA that drive that had the sector anomalies. I don't think it's necessarily in "awful" shape, but you definitely want healthy drives when being used in a RAID 0 array. I recommend you do the Advanced RMA, that way WD sends you a drive first and gives you 30 days to return the bad one.
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Making life hard for others since 1977.
I speak for myself and not my employer/affiliates of my employer.

So just so I completely understand, zeroing the drive prompted it to look at its sectors, and whereas 11 were confirmed bad and taken offline and 18 were suspect, it found 1 out of 18 that were bad, which is why (C6) Offline Uncorrectable is showing a value of 12 after the zeroing?
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If we lose this freedom of ours, history will record with the greatest astonishment, those who had the most to lose, did the least to prevent its happening.

reply to koitsu
One last question, will there be any issues with running the good drive with a fresh one I get out of the RMA? Or do I need to return both of them to stay in RAID 0?
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If we lose this freedom of ours, history will record with the greatest astonishment, those who had the most to lose, did the least to prevent its happening.

1. Exactly. (Wow, thank god, someone who understands! )

2nd question: there will be no issues as long as they give you the same model of drive -- or more importantly, a drive with the same LBA/sector count and the same physical sector size (512 vs 4096). In recent days (past year), most of my RMAs have resulted in WD sending me a different model of drive, ex: RMAing a WD1001FALS got me a WD1002FAEX (LBA counts are the same so no issues). However, in one case (RMAing a WD2002FAEX), they "no longer had this drive in stock" and insisted they send me a different model. I ended up with a WD2003FYYS.

This may be why they ask the "is the drive part of a RAID array" question on the phone -- but that's such a sleazy question. They'll ask you this on WD Green and "non-RAID-permitted" (whatever) drive models, and if you answer yes, they basically tell you to sod off. The Blacks are permitted to be in RAID; what worries me is that if you answer yes they'll take you through a bunch of rigmarole insisting that "because the drives are in RAID there's no way to test them, blah blah blah". This is why I always answer no to the question. On the other hand, possibly saying yes means that WD then knows they HAVE to give you a drive with the same LBA count and sector size.

See what I mean about the conundrum?

So just make sure whatever drive they want to send you has the same LBA count and uses the same sector size. If they tell you a model number on the phone, you can ask them what the physical sector size is, or what the LBA count is, and make sure it matches your current drive. If they match, you're fine.
--
Making life hard for others since 1977.
I speak for myself and not my employer/affiliates of my employer.

OK, well the cat is out of the bag as I already submitted the advance RMA case to their site and mentioned it was part of my RAID array in the details.

Worst case scenario, I RMA the first drive and get X in return. If it doesn't match what I have, I RMA the second older drive under warranty as well and say "I told you it was in RAID 0, and you sent me a different drive as replacement. This one is under warranty too, so have it."

I'll find out shortly how good their customer service is.

Edit:

Yep that sounds like the proper choice of action here, based on whatever they send you. Be sure to follow up in the thread with whatever happens -- I'm always interested.

On the bright side, whatever drive they send you will probably perform better, even if it's the same model.
--
Making life hard for others since 1977.
I speak for myself and not my employer/affiliates of my employer.

So they just added a WD7502AAEX to my WD account.

Sigh.

*chuckles* And I forgot to mention another aspect to this whole thing:

What good are3 or 5-year warranties if the manufacturer isn't going to still stock (or make!) that model of drive in 2 years? I guess it means you get a replacement product without having to pay anything, true, but if that product isn't identical to what you got, and you need an identical product given the environment...

Yeah, ponder that a bit.

It makes me wonder what WD is going to do with their next version/model of WD Red drives, since they're explicitly intended for NAS use (thus RAID).

I know how other vendors (specifically Sun and NetApp) have dealt with this -- they actually provide you with a drive that may be a "newer version" (sans physical sector size -- that must always match) but has the LBA count/capacity in the HPA region of the drive adjusted to match your existing drive/setup. Firmware differences on the other hand I'm not sure how they deal with; NetApp I imagine has an entire group dedicated to dealing with this kind of situation.

Anyway, all of this also makes me wonder a bit if it isn't a "ploy" to get people to have to buy new drives/spend more money when they shouldn't actually need to. Which leads me to:

Your best choice of action might be be to purchase a new WD7502AAEX (thus you'd have 2 of them for your array) and sell the WD6401AALS on eBay or similar.
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Making life hard for others since 1977.
I speak for myself and not my employer/affiliates of my employer.

reply to koitsu
Looks like they're sending me a second WD7502AAEX in return for my second WD6401AALS! Probably the best warranty support experience I have had! EVGA is second place.

»[Rave] Western Digital warranty support
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If we lose this freedom of ours, history will record with the greatest astonishment, those who had the most to lose, did the least to prevent its happening.

reply to Krisnatharok
Both drives look good/clean, no anomalies.

I'm amazed they shipped them both next-day-air. I was only on the phone with them yesterday afternoon about the second drive!

The only part that sucks is that both replacement drives have a limited warranty through 2/2013, even though the original drives were covered through 3/2014. Oh well, a small price to pay. And best case scenario, I don't need to use the warranty.
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If we lose this freedom of ours, history will record with the greatest astonishment, those who had the most to lose, did the least to prevent its happening.

reply to koitsu
There's gotta be something wrong with the JMicron Raid controller. Got ~120 MBps read out of the new array as well.

Yep, don't have a good 100% certain explanation for that one -- sorry. I'd love to say something like "stripe size too big or too small?" but that's really grasping at straws (most pick 128KBytes, some 64KBytes, some 256KBytes).

Is the JMicron chip wired to the PCIe or PCI bus? (I'm not sure how to determine this using Windows) I ask because 32-bit PCI is limited to 133MBytes/second.

I guess it could be a "driver quirk" or some other nonsense, but I tend to avoid JMicron controllers like the plague anyway. Unless you can figure it out, I'll just add this to my list of reasons to avoid them.

At least you know your disks are good and won't give you CRC errors.
--
Making life hard for others since 1977.
I speak for myself and not my employer/affiliates of my employer.

I'd tell you if I could find a copy of my mobo manual. It got lost/thrown out and there seems to be no copies of it online anywhere (EVGA x58 SLI - # 132-BL-E758-TR).

I do know that only a couple of the SATA ports go to the JMicron controller, because initially it didn't see both 750s until I swapped around the SATA ports.

I do know the other drives are not limited to 133 MBps as the SSD can hit 200+.
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If we lose this freedom of ours, history will record with the greatest astonishment, those who had the most to lose, did the least to prevent its happening.