Potential faulty HDD or is it the wrong type for PC use (WD Purple - Surveillance HDD)

[SM Phoo]

Hey guys. I was lucky enough to pick up a couple of WD Purple HDDs, 6TB each, for a decent price and thought nothing of it.

What I've noticed is, my PC seems to load quite slowly (Not that slow, but slow in terms of modern tech)

 

My OS is on an SSD, and currently both HDDs are empty, so that shouldn't effect loading times, but if I power the PC off completely from the PSU, on first start up, the PC runs a diagnostic on drive F ( Stage 1, 2 and 3 all pass) and the PC starts up fine. If I turn the PC off or restart, the PC comes on fine.

 

Today, I firstly did a command promt wmic diskdrive get model,status test which came back ok.

I then ran a quick test using the WD lifeguard diagnostic which also came back ok.

I then did the extended test and it failed with too many bad sectors detected.

 

Now I am at the conclusion that the HDD is faulty, as the other 6TB HDD is not having any of these issues.

 

One thing to note, it does make the dreaded ticking noise when the PC first starts up.

I've had a few issues with my PC (It's still in the process of being completed, but I've had to power the PC off by holding the power on a few occasions and I do hear a noise that I assumed was a fan suddenly stopping, but now I think it's more likely the HDD, so maybe I've caused this problem (As I don't think it's always done this until the last few days), and maybe if I've caused the problem, it could be a fixable problem.

 

But I am also thinking, are surveillance HDDs a bad option for a PC. I only got them as the deal was good at the time.

They were to be used for recording gameplay exclusively.

 

Thanks

[WhitetailAni]

Ticking noise, plus bad sectors, means dying drive.

Can you RMA it?

[SM Phoo]

Just now, ragnarok0273 said:

Ticking noise, plus bad sectors, means dying drive.

Can you RMA it?

Currently waiting in line for chat assistance.

Weirdly, when I go to check warranty status, it doesn't have an option for a standard HDD that I can find

[Action_Johnson]

Memory cards and drives designed for surveillance stuff and dashcams aren't designed to be used in a way that an operating system would use them for. Windows is constantly doing I/O on drives, which is why even SATA 6Gb SSD's feel so much faster, even compared to a really good 200mb/s hard drive.

 

Those WD Purples, or gigantic microSD cards you put into a dashcam, are designed for a constantly low rate sequential transfer over a great period of time.

 

Alot of Seagate's, and all of LaCie's external hard drives use these really slow disks and controllers, and I've never had so many drives go belly-up. I have about half a dozen of those orange LaCie Rugged drives and a 4TB LaCie Porsche drive that I inherited from my career, and no-joke, they level out at about 25-35MB/s. Truly the worst performing hard disks I've ever seen. Regardless of their formatting, NTFS, HFS+, ExFAT... 

 

Anecdotally, nearly every hard drive I've ever had die on me (about 6 in total over 15 years), have been Seagate/LaCie hard drives. Only other hard drive that died on me was an SN550 NVMe that was DOA. 

 

I would RMA the purples, replace them with Blue or Black drives, and sell the Purples on the FaceSpace or iBay's 

[Tristerin]

Ticking is bad, put an ear close to it to confirm

 

Slow is normal, its likely a 5400 rpm drive.  

 

It booting slowly after a shutdown, can be fixed via it not checking those discs for boot order

[SM Phoo]

2 minutes ago, Tristerin said:

Ticking is bad, put an ear close to it to confirm

 

Slow is normal, its likely a 5400 rpm drive.  

 

It booting slowly after a shutdown, can be fixed via it not checking those discs for boot order

 

Definitely that drive'

I've unplugged it from the power and when I turn the PC off I now get no noise of what I thought was a fan grinding to a halt, which I assume is now the disc inside the HDD.

 

I'm wondering if I've messed it up with a few continuous power downs holding power rather than shutting down normally.

Had a few bios issues which forced me to hard power off

[Tristerin]

Just now, SM Phoo said:

 

 

Eh, Ive lost drives but personally I wouldnt correlate it to that - but could see the reason WHY hard shutdowns affect them.  Personally Ive only lost drives due to being cheap or just freaking old.  BUT that isnt inclusive of everyone obviously.

 

It may have impacted surveillance drives but, I have a surveillance home network with 24/7 recording and power loses happen, etc and I have yet to lose a disc (but not frequent).

 

BACK UP THAT HDD DATA (though I think I read you said they are empty) asap, its dying.  

 

Based on what @Action_Johnson its probably a culmination of a few things, inclusive of the hard shut downs - though no one knows for sure.

 

Based on this thread Im concerned cause I recently acquired a bunch of 3tb refurbed data center drives and had some thoughts on using them in flipped computers.  Maybe not.

[SM Phoo]

46 minutes ago, Action_Johnson said:

Memory cards and drives designed for surveillance stuff and dashcams aren't designed to be used in a way that an operating system would use them for. Windows is constantly doing I/O on drives, which is why even SATA 6Gb SSD's feel so much faster, even compared to a really good 200mb/s hard drive.

 

Those WD Purples, or gigantic microSD cards you put into a dashcam, are designed for a constantly low rate sequential transfer over a great period of time.

 

Alot of Seagate's, and all of LaCie's external hard drives use these really slow disks and controllers, and I've never had so many drives go belly-up. I have about half a dozen of those orange LaCie Rugged drives and a 4TB LaCie Porsche drive that I inherited from my career, and no-joke, they level out at about 25-35MB/s. Truly the worst performing hard disks I've ever seen. Regardless of their formatting, NTFS, HFS+, ExFAT... 

 

Anecdotally, nearly every hard drive I've ever had die on me (about 6 in total over 15 years), have been Seagate/LaCie hard drives. Only other hard drive that died on me was an SN550 NVMe that was DOA. 

 

I would RMA the purples, replace them with Blue or Black drives, and sell the Purples on the FaceSpace or iBay's 

 

Thank you.

 

Looks like one is dying but out of warranty, so I will just sell the other and replace.