WD HD fails, then replacement drive fails

[Muse]

I bought a WD20EARS green 2TB HD on Jan. 2, 2011 from Dell online. Probably saw the deal in Hot Deals. I bought a Western Digital ELEMENTS 2TB USB HD enclosure from a member here, who bought his ELEMENTS for the drive itself and didn't need the enclosure.

Around a year ago the drive stopped working properly. I got a lot of the data off it before it stopped working entirely. I tried to retrieve the rest of the data a few days ago and couldn't get the drive recognized by my computers. I called WD support and RMA'd the drive. They told me it was in warranty until Jan. 25, 2014. Cool, they linked me to a mailing label and cross shipped me a replacement drive, which I received yesterday. Meantime my credit card has a hold on it for $163 contingent on their receiving my bad drive, which I sent them the day I secured the RMA.

Today I insert the replacement HD (WD20EZRX) in the ELEMENTS enclosure. That drive appears to also be a green HD, I suppose a more recent one than the WD20EARS I RMA'd. The drive I just received is seen but failed to format in either my desktop or my laptop. I called WD tech support today and the guy checks out documentation, tries to walk me through the format procedure, but I assure him it failed to do so 3 times (true). He puts me on hold again and comes back and starts walking me through the procedure to install WD Lifeguard Services, and I tell him it's already installed on the computer. He wants me to do an extended test and I start it. He asks about the estimated time and I tell him it's over 20 hours. He says to stop that test and write zeros instead, and I start that. That fails and he has me start the extended test again. Then he asks me what kind of computer I'm running. I tell him I have Windows PCs, two Lenovo laptops and a non-brand name desktop that I put together myself and I have the drive in a WD USB enclosure. He says the drive was sold to a manufacturer for installation in their machines, e.g. Dell, HP, etc. I tell him I bought it from Dell. He says I should seek warranty coverage through Dell and wishes me luck with the extended test and wishes me a good day. :hmm:

Now, I am miffed. I figure the drive is not going to work. I don't have the drive that Dell sent me (a different part number from the drive WD just sent me). How could I possibly get a replacement from Dell, even if it is still in warranty? Having already said they would honor my warranty, shouldn't WD follow up on this?

 

[Muse]

The extended WD Data Lifeguard test lasted around 19 hours but completed and the result was PASS. I have to think that the "test" somehow fixed something that was preventing the drive from formatting. Hmm... they don't advertise this, right? I wonder if the drive is compromised, IOW, will it fail _prematurely_? Obviously a concern given my frustrations with the drive it replaces.

 

[Elixer]

I am curious, what does the SMART info look like for this drive ?
Install crystaldiskinfo (free) and post a screenshot.

If WD did a RMA swap, then it is on them to do another RMA swap, not with dell.

 

[corkyg]

You have the drive in an enclosure. Have you tried connecting it directly to an internal SATA port? The problem could be with the enclosure.

 

[Old Hippie]

Now, I am miffed. I figure the drive is not going to work. I don't have the drive that Dell sent me (a different part number from the drive WD just sent me). How could I possibly get a replacement from Dell, even if it is still in warranty? Having already said they would honor my warranty, shouldn't WD follow up on this?

Forget about it.

This is what you get for swapping different drives/cases from various manfgs.

Sorry but call it a lesson learned.

 

[Russwinters]

Doing DR I see soooooooooooo many of these, WD Greens are complete trash. Firmware failures all over the place, heads failures, etc.


argh.

 

[Muse]

You have the drive in an enclosure. Have you tried connecting it directly to an internal SATA port? The problem could be with the enclosure.

Yes, corkyg. Well, the day I RMA'd it, I did some testing to make sure the drive was bad. I did it as much for anything, the data I'd failed to retrieve. I have two other WD ELEMENTS enclosures with 2TB WD green drives in them. I opened one of those (working OK), and tried the bad HD in it and it didn't work. Then I tried the working HD from that enclosure and put it in the enclosure of the bad drive and it worked. Conclusion: it's the drive that's bad, not the enclosure and its interface.

I couldn't test the drive on an internal SATA port because my desktops don't support the drive. My main desktop's Silicon Image SATA controller is really old, and it does support a 500MB drive I have on it, but not well!

 

[Muse]

I am curious, what does the SMART info look like for this drive ?
Install crystaldiskinfo (free) and post a screenshot.

If WD did a RMA swap, then it is on them to do another RMA swap, not with dell.

I can post a screenshot, don't know why I'd need crystaldiskinfo, WD Lifeguard Diagnostics will display the data if you click on SMART. Yesterday I hand typed some of the data, seemingly the relevant data into my hardrive.dbf table. Here it is:
- - - -
My results (partial, the rest seem just plain OK, I suppose...):



ID Value Threshold Worst Warranty
Raw Reed Error Rate 1 200 51 200 1
Spin Up Time 3 188 21 188 1
Start/Stop Count 4 100 0 100 0
Re-allocated Sector Cnt 4 200 140 200 1
- -
Current Pending Sector Count C5 200 0 200 0
Offline Uncorrectable Sector Cnt C6 100 0 253 0
UltraDMA CRC Error Rate C7 200 0 200 0
Multi Zone Error Rate C8 100 0 253 0
- - - -
Yesterday I found a thread that did some interpretation of similar SMART data and I kind of concluded that my data wasn't too bad, that the drive might in fact be pretty OK (this was before I ran the format that ultimately failed):

http://community.wdc.com/t5/Desktop-Portable-Drives/Interpreting-SMART-results/td-p/210244

 

[Muse]

I was quite optimistic once the drive had passed the Extended Test yesterday (and subsequently the Quick test) that it would format finally. I started the format on one of the machines in which it had failed. It hadn't even started the format (i.e. I saw no therm bar advancing left to right before the format process failed). This time the format started and proceeded, seemingly just fine. It was an approximately 5 hour process, and when I came back to the machine after it was surely completed, I woke the display to discover a short dialog saying that Windows was incapable of formatting the hard drive.

Well, what to do. It seems obvious to me that having been told by a WD CSR that my warranty is good to Jan. 24, 2014, and having received a replacement HD from them, they should not refuse to replace that with another HD if the one they just sent me is defective. Surely WD can't expect me to deal with Dell with the HD they just sent me.

I'm right now running the Extended Test again, using the same Windows XP laptop that ran it successfully before. However, after it completes (presumably successfully), I will attempt to format the drive using my Windows 7 Ultimate laptop. The OS, I suppose, should not make a difference, but maybe a 2nd run of the Extended Test will succeed in mapping bad sectors that prevented the last format from succeeding. However, even if that's true, I have to wonder if the drive is in such a bad state that its expected life before failure is indeed going to be quite short! I don't really know what's at play here, but these are my thoughts. I don't really know if the Extended Test does bad sector mapping, but have to assume that it was that or something like it that got the last format attempt to seemingly come close to success.

 

[Muse]

Forget about it.

This is what you get for swapping different drives/cases from various manfgs.

Sorry but call it a lesson learned.

Dude, are you paying attention? The case and HD were meant for each other (and actually they are both Western Digital). :whiste: The ELEMENTS came with the very same HD in them. I'm not saying I don't have lessons to learn, I sure do, but that isn't the problem here.

Doing DR I see soooooooooooo many of these, WD Greens are complete trash. Firmware failures all over the place, heads failures, etc.


argh.

Hmm. If this doesn't work out (i.e. if the drive won't work and WD won't replace it and Dell says they are off the hook at this point), I guess I'll have to try something else. Maybe another HD for the enclosure or another external 2+TB drive/enclosure entirely. Maybe scour Newegg for reviews on something that's been around a while. Sheesh, doesn't MTBF mean anything anymore?

 

[Ketchup]

Can you give us some specs/pics on the enclosure?

 

[SilentRunning]

Have you tried formatting with the "WD Quick Formatter for Windows" utility?

http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=303&sid=34&lang=en

 

[Muse]

Have you tried formatting with the "WD Quick Formatter for Windows" utility?

http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=303&sid=34&lang=en

Thanks... I installed the WD Quick Format Utility and it succeeded in formatting it, or so it seems. Do I trust this? Should I now see if I can do a full format? Why does a quick format work and a full format fail (this even after a PASS on the WD Lifeguard extended test)? Data integrity is important to me. I have a lot of data I don't want to lose, besides that a dead HD is a headache, always. I'm wondering if I should call WD support and insist on another RMA.

 

[tweakboy]

Your cursed my friend. Let us pray for our little friend and his WD. Amen

 

[Muse]

I am curious, what does the SMART info look like for this drive ?
Install crystaldiskinfo (free) and post a screenshot.

If WD did a RMA swap, then it is on them to do another RMA swap, not with dell.

Just installed Crystaldiskinfo, here's the screen shot of the SMART data:

I could not do a full format with either of two WinXP machines. WD Quick Format Utility (which ignores everything but the file allocation table, I believe), did the format, but I suspect the drive has significant issues. Opinions appreciated.

 

[Elixer]

Download a gparted live CD, http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php
And boot with that (pick if you want CD/USB/whatever), and try formatting with that.

 

[KillerBee]

My WD20EARS started failing this week
2 year warranty expires in just 7 days
WD does make it easy to get an RMA when it fails their tests

Hopefully will have better luck with my replacement when it comes in

 

[Muse]

My WD20EARS started failing this week
2 year warranty expires in just 7 days
WD does make it easy to get an RMA when it fails their tests

Hopefully will have better luck with my replacement when it comes in

Are you sure your warranty is 2 years? When I looked it up online a couple months ago I saw 3 years. Maybe depends how you got it? Anyway, call them. I got a guy on the phone and he made it easy. Preferred talking to someone rather than dealing with it online.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Doing DR I see soooooooooooo many of these, WD Greens are complete trash. Firmware failures all over the place, heads failures, etc.


argh.

Is part of the issue that a small controller chip for the head is actually glued instead of soldered and it melts over time? I recall hearing that and I think it was WD drives specifically.

Also the issue with lot of enclosures is they often have zero ventilation. The drive cooks. In fact even a drive dock where the drive is open air should have a fan of sorts to blow on the drive. I had hitachi drives actually MELT the plastic of such a dock. Had to fit a fan on it. Imagine inside a fully enclosed enclosure. Hard drives get hot and it's one of those things we often overlook.

Personally for production stuff I like going with the higher end consumer drives such as WD black. I've had good luck with those so far. Hitachis are also good but I find that they get very hot.

 

[Mfusick]

Are you sure your warranty is 2 years? When I looked it up online a couple months ago I saw 3 years. Maybe depends how you got it? Anyway, call them. I got a guy on the phone and he made it easy. Preferred talking to someone rather than dealing with it online.

WD lowered the warranty

 

[Muse]

Is part of the issue that a small controller chip for the head is actually glued instead of soldered and it melts over time? I recall hearing that and I think it was WD drives specifically.

Also the issue with lot of enclosures is they often have zero ventilation. The drive cooks. In fact even a drive dock where the drive is open air should have a fan of sorts to blow on the drive. I had hitachi drives actually MELT the plastic of such a dock. Had to fit a fan on it. Imagine inside a fully enclosed enclosure. Hard drives get hot and it's one of those things we often overlook.

Personally for production stuff I like going with the higher end consumer drives such as WD black. I've had good luck with those so far. Hitachis are also good but I find that they get very hot.

The ELEMENTS enclosure for this HD has no ventilation, no fan. I have 3 of these. I wonder if I can do something to cool them, drill holes in the case maybe, mount them in a structure to facilitate air flow, even apply a small fan. I have many 12v fans I'm not using. Applying 5v to them would provide some air and wouldn't be noisy. I like to think outside the box. ()

 

[rsutoratosu]

these greens are bad, i reply to a few threads on this i had 4 fail one after another within a 1 month period.. all 4 drives were purchase in 2010. It was setup in a server room with 67 or 69 degree AC.. still failed

 

[KillerBee]

Are you sure your warranty is 2 years? When I looked it up online a couple months ago I saw 3 years. Maybe depends how you got it? Anyway, call them. I got a guy on the phone and he made it easy. Preferred talking to someone rather than dealing with it online.

You're right it was a 3 year originally - from newegg Apr 2010
Makes it even better knowing that it started going the week before a 3 year warranty runs out. I went with the advanced replacement option too where they send the new drive out first and put a hold on your CC for the full amount until bad one is returned.

 

[bryanl]

I couldn't test the drive on an internal SATA port because my desktops don't support the drive. My main desktop's Silicon Image SATA controller is really old, and it does support a 500MB drive I have on it, but not well!

I'm not familiar with Silicon Image controllers built into motherboards, but plug-in cards using their oldest controller chips support 2TB drives.

 

[Unoid]

Frankly I'm sick of WD and Seagates. 3 Drives from both in past 5 years have died on me.

Samsung F4's however are running perfect in my NAS.