A new WD Elements Desktop drive communication errors

[midix]

I just got myself a new WD Elements Desktop 6TB drive for backups. So I started copying 1TB of data to it. In general, speed remains stable around 130 - 50 MB/s (depends if it's copying large files or lots of smaller ones). 

 

However, I noticed that sometimes speed suddenly drops to 0 and resumes after 2-5 seconds. Hard Disk Sentinel shows performance issues and increasing "Ultra ATA CRC Error Count" at those moments when speed drops to 0, and Windows Event Viewer also shows warnings about copy retry operations.

 

I tried to attach it to another USB 3 port and it seemed to make the errors less frequent but I'm not sure.

 

Is this behavior normal for USB 3 external drives or WD Elements? Or was it only because the constant stream of 1TB of my data is a bit too much and it will work fine later for incremental backups? Or is their supplied USB 3 cable so crappy and I should find a better one?

 

Or is there something wrong with my USB 3 ports or drivers? I have Gigabyte GA-H270M-D3H motherboard.

 

 

 

[LunaP0n3]

I've got a WD Elements 3TB Drive hooked up to my tower, It's several years old and hasn't died yet, nor have I had that error. (I use HDSentinel too)

It's unusual that a new drive is already throwing up errors. Are all the connectors firm on the back of the drive and the USB ports are not dusty?

HDSentinel Article

[midix]

Tried the disk with different USB ports, with different computers, re-plugged all the cables - still the same issue. Write speeds are low and all over the place. Read speeds, however, hold steady at 190 MB/s.

CrystalDiskMark also confirms this.

 

The same on a Mac - reading steady at 190, writing average 40 MB/s (no nice graphs or event logs to see how it stutters and drops to 0 every 5 seconds or so).

 

No reallocated sectors, no bad noises - just this error complaining about communication issues and operation retry.

 

Compared to a cheap 2.5" USB3 disk enclosure with an old laptop drive inside on the same computers and ports - write and read speeds are both steady at 87 MB/s and no issues reported by HD Sentinel nor Windows event log. So, I can exclude my USB port or driver issues.

 

Unfortunately, I have no other USB 3 cable with proper other end plug to try.

 

I think I got a bad drive and will have to return it. I'm a bit worried they might say that the drive was damaged at my home or during transport. 

 

Wondering if there is actually a chance that it indeed was shocked during transport? Is it possible to shock a hard drive in a way that it starts losing connection during writes but is able to read at full speed?

[Kilrah]

So it's DOA. No a shock won't do that.

[midix]

Yeah, half dead as a zombie   because it can read but not write.