Do I RMA my drives?

[TheCommentator123]

Hi, I currently have 2 WD drives one of which I've already packed for an RMA, however I am not sure whether the second is worthy of an RMA as it hasn't yet failed.

The first drive was a WD 2.5" 750GB HDD of which the smart test results are shown below (please excuse me not using crystal disk or something but I just used the smart of speedfan and noticed how bad shape the drive was in that I didn't even bother installing crystal disk.)

 

Upon removing the first drive I was clever enough to backup all of my data to my removable HDD, due to my wonderful luck and fortune the disk seemed to go corrupt or something and the file format turned from NTFS to RAW for some reason. I then had the wonderful experience of recovering all my data (which I did, hats of to Recuva)

I then downloaded crystal disk and it is showing a caution due to the current pending sector count. Is this a suitably large enough error to RMA this drive to

 

Do I RMA my drives?

Disk 1: WD 2.5" 750GB HDD - pic that isn't using crystal disk

Disk 2: WD MyPassport 1TB external drive - Crystal disk pic

Thanks, TheCommentator123 

[Radium_Angel]

3 minutes ago, TheCommentator123 said:

it hasn't yet failed

Unless it fails some kind of hard drive test, I doubt WD will take it back

[SpookyCitrus]

Any time you have a drive showing bad sectors or bad pending sectors I would advise a replacement. Even if WD won't RMA it, you should still replace it.

[dalekphalm]

From the looks of it, you've got a single bad sector that's still pending remapping.

 

This is definitely a caution - though the drive may still last a long time (all HDD's have a certain number of spare sectors for cases like this - it's not unusual for a few bad sectors, but typically once you get some, it gets worse quickly).

 

I would personally try and RMA it with WDC - if they accept the RMA, good. If not, I would demote the drive to "non crucial data storage".

[WereCatf]

Um, how old are these drives? Both of them have thousands of power-on hours and start/stop-counts, which would probably indicate several years of use.

 

EDIT: Just asking, because are you sure they're even under warranty anymore?

[SSD Sean]

Both are throwing SMART errors, RMA both. One of my 3TB drives showed 8 reallocated sectors last week, to the trash bin it went. Lol

[TheCommentator123]

1 minute ago, WereCatf said:

how old are these drives?

The 2.5" is about 4 years old but is a WD black and has a 5 year warranty and therefore I would expect it to last 5 years of realistic use. The removable HDD is 2-3 years old and still has another year of warranty

 

3 minutes ago, dalekphalm said:

I would personally try and RMA it with WDC

I agree and think I may try, however I have to pay postage to WD and if they don't replace it then I'll have to pay return postage too and sure that's only maybe $30-40 total but I'm a student and I'd rather not part with money unnecessarily.

 

Thanks for everyone's swift replies btw.

[Stormseeker9]

5 minutes ago, WereCatf said:

Um, how old are these drives? Both of them have thousands of power-on hours and start/stop-counts, which would probably indicate several years of use.

Well 173 full days for the bottom one.. if I read correctly. Could be if always plugged in / used right?

[TheCommentator123]

17 minutes ago, Stormseeker9 said:

Well 173 full days for the bottom one.. if I read correctly. Could be if always plugged in / used right?

Used during the day for university work, and used at night for music/dj-ing. That's probably why the value is so high.

[Stormseeker9]

4 minutes ago, TheCommentator123 said:

Used during the day for university work, and used at night for music/dj-ing. That's probably why the value is so high.

Oh I don’t see how that is much use, that’s what I meant, but could be reading it wrong somehow 

[TheCommentator123]

Hi everyone, So I contacted WD and they got me to install their software and it passes their smart test (I presume because it hasn't actually failed yet)

Might be a dumb question but should I start saving and deleting lots of random data to try and make the drive fail so I can send it back? 

Thanks

 

Edit: after digging around in their software the current pending sector count cannot be justified for a warranty. The 3 attributes that will result in a RMA are: 

The raw read error rate, the spin up time and the reallocated sector count.

This might mean that my internal drive with 138 reallocated sectors cannot be RMA'd yet due to not reaching WD's required warranty attribute value - sucks.

[dalekphalm]

I would try and push the issue with them. Pending sectors are left pending if the data can not be remapped. 

[porina]

Personally I'd discontinue use of both disks for anything important. Get your important data elsewhere if not already done.

 

If WD wont take them under warranty in current condition, I'd do the following process.

Run the WD tool and do a full surface read. This doesn't fix anything, but will at least detect if there are more regions going bad that haven't already been picked up.

Run the WD tool and do a full surface write. This will wipe the disk. It will also allow it to reallocate pending sectors.

Run the WD tool and do a full surface read. This verifies there are no pending sectors left.

 

There is a chance it might find deeper degradation which might also allow RMA. If not, I'd only use them for replaceable data e.g. game installs.

[TheCommentator123]

 

15 minutes ago, porina said:

Run the WD tool and do a full surface read.

I was just doing this and the disk has just suddenly formatted from NTFS to RAW again. What is happening? When I reformat it goes back to NTFS and everything seems fine.

[porina]

1 minute ago, TheCommentator123 said:

I was just doing this and the disk has just suddenly formatted from NTFS to RAW again. What is happening? When I reformat it goes back to NTFS and everything seems fine.

The read test shouldn't do anything to the data on the drive. Maybe something else is going on but I don't know where to start on that. If you're going to do the write test afterwards, might as well leave it unformatted for now.

[TheCommentator123]

28 minutes ago, porina said:

might as well leave it unformatted for now.

So I'd already formatted the drive before you posted this comment. Anyways, all seems fine to begin with, the disk appears in the file explorer as normal, but as soon as set the WD software to scan/do anything with the drive the drive becomes unresponsive for example when trying to access from the file explorer the drive shows "E:\ is not available Access is denied" - (the software also seems to be stuck in some infinite scanning loop or something)

However, upon unplugging and re-plugging the drive, it becomes responsive again.

[TheCommentator123]

Using a 3rdparty software scan it seems to be showing ever sector as "bad" 

[dalekphalm]

1 hour ago, TheCommentator123 said:

 

I was just doing this and the disk has just suddenly formatted from NTFS to RAW again. What is happening? When I reformat it goes back to NTFS and everything seems fine.

Reply back to WDC about the RMA with this new information. Could be a controller issue.

 

Also I would still do this:

1 hour ago, porina said:

Run the WD tool and do a full surface read. This doesn't fix anything, but will at least detect if there are more regions going bad that haven't already been picked up.

Run the WD tool and do a full surface write. This will wipe the disk. It will also allow it to reallocate pending sectors.

Run the WD tool and do a full surface read. This verifies there are no pending sectors left.

Don't do anything in between each of these steps - if the drive shows as RAW, just ignore it and keep going until you've done a full surface Read, Write, Read.

 

After that, re-run the full diagnostics test.

[TheCommentator123]

Just for anyone's interest, this is the disks read test rn.

 

[NumLock21]

WD has their own Diagnostic utility for testing their own drives. To make your life easier, where they'll accept it for an RMA, run their diagnostic tool and it will spit out a error code or message if it's bad. Then use that to do the RMA. Do note that the return drive you will get back are refurbished and from my personal experience they don't last too long either. 

 

[ZephCloud]

my toshiba drive shows relocation sector errors on crystal disk info and hwinfo64 in less then a month..they accepted it back and give me a new 1...xD