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uniqs
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Subaru
1-3-2-4
Premium Member
join:2001-05-31
Greenwich, CT

Subaru

Premium Member

[hard drive] WD Caviar Blue failure rates?

Pretty sure I have a bad 320GB drive I can't get it to post at all, when you turn the system on the dvd rom drive light just keeps blinking and you get a flash from the hdd activity light about every second.

Took the case off and you could hear the drive moving the heads, I'm going to try testing it in another system but I don't think I've heard anything bad about the WD blue drives?

Camelot One
MVM
join:2001-11-21
Bloomington, IN

Camelot One

MVM

I am not aware of any mass failure problems with the Blue line, but that doesn't mean there won't be a bad drive now and then. Manufacturing defect, overheating, you name it, something CAN go wrong.
bbear2
Premium Member
join:2003-10-06
dot.earth

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Does it show up in the BIOS?

Subaru
1-3-2-4
Premium Member
join:2001-05-31
Greenwich, CT

Subaru

Premium Member

Never could get into bios the monitor never got the turn on signal to see anything..

Going to check it now in my system at home.
Subaru

Subaru

Premium Member

Just got around to it, connected it to my system and it does not show in bios or windows..
Subaru

Subaru

Premium Member

Wait a sec.... It's showing up on my SATA to usb and scanning for errors right now.. has 99 power on cycles and I see nothing odd.. after the error check in HD tune going to try another system.
Subaru

1 edit

Subaru

Premium Member

Click for full size
Ok some stuff I got

The 2nd picture it got as far as like 305GB for the position and then it just dropped off the sata bus and ended with error blocks, in this picture it happened sooner then 2 hours into the scan..

However I can see all the stuff on the drive with the external connection but nothing in both systems.

*edit

just put it back in the system it came out of not changing anything but just doing the error scan on the stata to usb and now it's working in the system it came out of.. but I still don't trust it..

squircle
join:2009-06-23
OTWAON10

squircle

Member

FWIW, I've had 5 year-old Caviar Black drives fail on me (some spectacularly, some slowly) in the last 3 weeks but my 4 500GB Caviar Blue drives have been solid for the past 4 years.

Edit: I meant that to read 5 (quantity) one year old drives, not one 5 year-old drive.
bbear2
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join:2003-10-06
dot.earth

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Can you do a full format of the drive? I've found (and been told) that is a pretty good test for a new (or questionable) drive too.

Camelot One
MVM
join:2001-11-21
Bloomington, IN

1 recommendation

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I would download and run the WD Data Lifeguard Diagnostics program.
»support.wdc.com/product/ ··· &lang=en
It is usually the best judge of whether you have a bad drive, or just some formatting problems.

koitsu
MVM
join:2002-07-16
Mountain View, CA
Humax BGW320-500

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Please provide a screen shot of the Health tab after the Error Scan you ran.

There are known problems where HD Tune Pro will start spitting out craploads of supposed errors even though there are none. I've seen this happen as a result of Windows dropping devices off the bus as well.

I would also like to see a screen shot of the Health tab taken after you run a another Error Scan (and only if it experiences the error conditions shown similar to that of the your previous screenshot). This gives me before-and-after shots to compare.

All that said -- based on the Health tab of your first screenshot, your drive is in perfect condition, but I need to see the output post-Error-Scan.

Finally, there is no "high failure rate" seen with WD Caviar Blue drives. The Subject line in question is speculative at best, and very implicative without substantiated evidence (i.e. it implies "problems with a series of drives" without a sufficiently large sample of drives to prove that). Not raggin' on ya or anything, just saying it comes off/reads that way.

Subaru
1-3-2-4
Premium Member
join:2001-05-31
Greenwich, CT

Subaru

Premium Member

It did it witht he WD tools program as well, it's like random.. it will happen then the drive will show up again.

I haven't been able to complete a whole error scan in both HD tune or the WD tools program without it dropping off the bus and giving me errors.

koitsu
MVM
join:2002-07-16
Mountain View, CA

koitsu

MVM

Please just do what I asked if you could; don't bother with WD's utilities. There's logic in what I've requested.

Subaru
1-3-2-4
Premium Member
join:2001-05-31
Greenwich, CT

Subaru

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Well I can try again.. I would prefer to test the drive in the system but the drive for some reason does not show up..

I had an issue on a samsung drive that went out.. very picky.. new drive from Amazon is here as well.
Subaru

Subaru

Premium Member

stuff

screavan
join:2012-11-27
Pearcy, AR

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You could also get Acronis and try to image it just to be safe. Since you bought Western Digital you get a free copy of the tool: »support.wdc.com/product/ ··· &x=0&y=0

Subaru
1-3-2-4
Premium Member
join:2001-05-31
Greenwich, CT

Subaru

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Well As seeing I can get data off of it using external I'm just going to get the itunes music and videos and that's about it.

For some reason it was acting up still really bad in his system but fine in mine, but the funny thing was why after 2 years?

I just installed windows 7 on the new seagate and it with without a hitch.

screavan
join:2012-11-27
Pearcy, AR

screavan

Member

After two years I'm not sure what could be going on but that specific model is actually slated for a 3 year warranty check the serial number here: »support.wdc.com/warranty ··· ?lang=en

I have had before but don't remember the specific reason on why it happened. I think in the end I just replaced the drive as I didn't want to lose any data.

Maybe try the extended test using the WDC LifeGuard Tool (»support.wdc.com/product/ ··· &x=0&y=0) so it can mark the bad sectors if any and prevent the OS from using them Instruction on how to do extended test if needed: »wdc.custhelp.com/app/ans ··· ppZ2w%3D

Edit: sorry for typos, I'm hurting alot today

Subaru
1-3-2-4
Premium Member
join:2001-05-31
Greenwich, CT

Subaru

Premium Member

well now the drive is being a pain in the ass trying to move what's left of it but I might not bother now in windows it shows the drive letter but no info.

koitsu
MVM
join:2002-07-16
Mountain View, CA
Humax BGW320-500

koitsu

MVM

Some key points here:

1. Drive started out looking fine -- with a start/stop count of 1540, a power-cycle count of 1327, and an "unsafe shutdown count" (this is mislabelled in HD Tune Pro; it should be Power-off Retract Count) of 39. Read error rate is 0 as well (that will matter momentarily). Load cycle count is not relevant so please do not bring it into the discussion.

It's important to note the drive at this phase has no indications of sector-level issues nor remapped LBAs. The drive also shows no CRC errors, indicating physical cabling and related bits are just fine.

HD Tune Pro's error scan suddenly turning up thousands of errors cannot be substantiated -- problem is likely elsewhere, and this has been seen by others (including me). Keep reading.

2. Next phase shows a drive that passed an error scan without any issues (every LBA was readable), with a start/stop count of 1551, power-cycle count of 1338, and an unsafe shutdown count of 50. Read error rate is still 0.

Comparing these numbers to the previous set shows that the drive started a total of 11 times (1551-1540), power-cycled a total of 11 times (1338-1327), and heads were retracted a total of 11 times (50-39).

Drive at this phase also shows no sector-level issues or remapped LBAs, and did pass a full (non-quick, i.e. every LBA was read successfully) read scan in HD Tune Pro.

Has this system been power-cycled a total of 11 times between those two phases? Pressing Reset does not constitute a power-cycle, nor does a standard system shutdown or reboot.

If the system has not been power-cycled this number of times, then it is very likely your drive is losing power. Bad power circuitry on the PCB is possible (it's the most likely thing to go bad on a hard disk), but bad or rippling voltages from the PSU are another possibility, as well as a faulty PSU or faulty power connector. If you're using a 4-pin-Molex-to-SATA-power adapter, please cease and use a native SATA power connector from the PSU (if the PSU does not have one, buy one which does).

If the system has been power-cycled this number of times, then onward ho:

3. Next phase shows the drive having been power-cycled another 8 times (1346-1338).

The drive suddenly begins showing 2 suspect LBAs -- meaning attempts to read from those LBAs will result in an I/O error (unreadable), so you've lost bare minimum 1024 bytes of data at this point.

The read error rate now jumps to an arbitrary value of 502, indicating the drive has had some issues reading data from the platters. This is absolutely related to the aforementioned 2 suspect LBAs.

Owner of drive now states the drive "shows up in Windows but has no drive letter", indicating the suspect LBAs could be ones used by the main NTFS partition table, or could be sector 0 (in which case you're kind of screwed).

So, things for you to figure out:

1. You need to start keeping track of every time the system is rebooted (just in case), reset is pressed, or power-cycled. Keep a pad of paper handy for this task.

2. You also need to keep track of situations where the drive begins showing problems/issues. If you really think it's falling off the bus (and it may be -- see above analysis model), then the cause would be loss of power, and SMART tracks this. Meaning: if the drive is operating fine, then suddenly starts showing problems, look at the relevant counters before and after the issue. No offence (honest), but use your brain on this one -- for example, if power-cycling the drive is required to get it to show back up on the bus, then if the drive abruptly lost power this counter may end up having incremented by 2 rather than just 1. That pad of paper comes in handy again...

3. I strongly suggest zeroing the entire drive at this point. You can do this in HD Tune Pro, but you will need to delete all partitions from the drive using Disk Management or a similar tool (HD Tune Pro won't let you erase the drive if there are partitions on it).

The reason for doing this is pretty simple: it's the only way to get the drive to determine if those 2 suspect LBAs are actually bad and if they need to be remapped or not -- the only way to do that is to issue writes to the LBAs. If the sectors which the LBAs point to are actually fine, the "Current Pending Sector" count will decrement. If the sectors are determined as actually bad, "Current Pending Sector" will decrement, and "Reallocated Sector Count" will increment; "Reallocated Event Count" might also increment.

Furthermore (and just as important), it will issue writes to every LBA on the drive, so any sector which is acting wonky/strange which you haven't seen the effects of yet can be "pre-emptively" dealt with per se (e.g. remapped if need be).

Be sure to take SMART health snapshots/screenshots before and after the erase so you can see what's transpired; I can do an analysis of that post-mortem if you wish.

Finally, if you don't want to deal with any of this, leave the drive in its current condition (2 suspect LBAs shown) and do an Advanced RMA with Western Digital and get a new/replacement drive first, then send them the one that's driving you bonkers. The reason is "Bad sectors" or "Bad blocks" (even though that's not necessarily true at this point, they're not going to care).

Subaru
1-3-2-4
Premium Member
join:2001-05-31
Greenwich, CT

2 edits

Subaru

Premium Member

Would love to try this but windows after boot thinks its a great time to do check disk... Well its been running for like 2 hours and its only at 5113 of 258560 seems a bit slow, no?

*edit

ended up just rebooting and scanning the drive in windows now much faster...

Not looking very good on the scan 11 min in and almost 9% damaged blocks.
Subaru

1 edit

Subaru

Premium Member

Ok it seems like it froze here been stuck at saying 1 hour for over 10 min now.

*started zero-fill erase.

koitsu
MVM
join:2002-07-16
Mountain View, CA
Humax BGW320-500

koitsu

MVM

The reason Windows wants to run CHKDSK is because the filesystem has some flags set that indicate the drive needs to be checked (usually unsafe/unclean shutdowns can cause this, but some other situations can as well).

I think this drive has some kind of mechanical problem. I've never seen a drive read all LBAs on a drive without any errors, then a few hours later begin exhibiting what you see above. The issue is not related to bad drive cache either -- it's definitely something mechanical.

My initial guess would be a misaligned head or something of that nature. Substrate problems are unlikely given the low number of power-on hours on the drive and would have shown up sooner in the drive's lifetime. There's nothing I can do aside from what I've already done WRT this drive.

My advice at this point is to RMA the drive. Don't mess around any longer with it -- just RMA it. Western Digital can/will have a fun time figuring out what's causing problems with that one.

Subaru
1-3-2-4
Premium Member
join:2001-05-31
Greenwich, CT

2 edits

Subaru

Premium Member

Well here it is after the zero fill

Warranty expires 10/21/2013

Wow they hold $90 for the drive? I'm not sure where I was getting $20 from.

koitsu
MVM
join:2002-07-16
Mountain View, CA
Humax BGW320-500

koitsu

MVM

As predicted, the drive is getting worse. Some remaps didn't even work (also indicated by the write error rate), others did, and there are still even more pending. RMA away!

For Advanced RMAs, WD often marks up the cost of the drive by 2-3x compared to retail. This is to protect them in the case they never receive the bad drive within 30 days. For example, a WD10EFRX (WD Red 1TB) warrants a potential charge of US$250, which is roughly 3x higher than the retail price. They only charge your credit card if they do not receive the bad drive.

Subaru
1-3-2-4
Premium Member
join:2001-05-31
Greenwich, CT

Subaru

Premium Member

Well crap this whole issue is back..

I'm thinking bad memory or mobo now..

here is a video..

how it happened, I walked away for about 3 min and came back and I saw this..



Since it was locked up I pressed the reset button and that gets you to this..

»www.youtube.com/watch?v= ··· youtu.be


Going to run memtest on it next.

Funny thing I notice it only acts this way when a hard drive is connected but if it's not it boots as normal until it gets stopped by saying no boot drive.

But then sometimes it works, from the way it looks I'd suspect memory issues.
Subaru

Subaru

Premium Member

Ok it passed memtest, seems like while the memory was seated pressing down on it made it work, this case has to be one of the cheapest cases I've ever seen.. every friken panel on it flexes, the side panels feel like a sheet of paper..

I'm going to take the memory sticks out but support the back panel with something since that flexes like crazy..

koitsu
MVM
join:2002-07-16
Mountain View, CA
Humax BGW320-500

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Also remember that hard disk "issues" can manifest themselves in a way most people don't expect: depending on how software (whether it be drivers or applications, doesn't matter) handles I/O errors (specifically files which can't be read due to "suspect" LBAs), some may just silently continue onward with no error handling. The end result, more often than not, is a piece of memory that was used to read the file contents containing random data (or zeros if they use memset() or calloc()), and the software treating that data as if it were correct.

This is why with hard disk issues, the first thing I do is replace the hard disk + reinstall the OS (or do a full bare metal restore from backups).

Glad you at least tracked it down to something physical though. Hooray PC hardware. *cough*

Subaru
1-3-2-4
Premium Member
join:2001-05-31
Greenwich, CT

Subaru

Premium Member

Yeah I know he was dealing with some heavy spyware from before and I know when he could not get the system to turn off he just pulled the plug...

I will get around to doing the RMA with WD
Subaru

Subaru

Premium Member

ugh I think something is wrong with the mobo.. again it's doing the same thing in the video.. I'm about to throw my hands up and just order another mobo.

It's a biostar mcp6p3 but I can't find anyone with the same issue as me.