Should I get replacement for WD External Hard Drive ?

[RidwanAlex]

I bought WD My Passport 4TB 2 years ago.

And It has 3 years of warranty, and still got 1 year left.

 

I usually only used the drive to backup my games, but 2 days ago, while I was copying my games, the drive suddenly went corrupt, it has wd locker on it. I wonder if wd locker is the issue.

While plugged in, the drive loads fine, after unlock the drive with wd unlocker, the drive show up, not showing space, file explorer keeps loading and eventually crashed. disk management stuck.

Use other partition tools, and the disk partition read as RAW, I decided the data not recoverable anymore, so I followed online guide to re-format the drive.

Because it's locked by wd locker, and after unlock the hard drive just stuck, I can't format it, so based on online guide, I deliberately input 5 wrong times password and use wd drive utilities to erase the drive.

After erase, and using exFat, the drive now useable. But on crystal disk info show caution.

WD drive utilities SMART show passed. I was testing the drive with minitool partition surface test for about 80%, it running for 12 hours and my home got blackout, smh...

 

And right now, if the wd drive plugged in, it takes a long time for the drive to show up, but the driver already detected, and safely remove usb already saw the device. But the drive takes long time to show up, and show up only after I open minitool partition / windows built-in disk management tools.

 

Right now, I am so confused, I lost my data, I don't know if I should replace my drive. Should I test the drive anymore ?

Any software to recommend anyway ? I can't even contact WD support right now because of weekend.

[Archer42]

Its hard to tell. Pending sectors might mean issues, or they might mean just data corruption.

The simplest way would be doing full format. Will take a bit of time, but since it checks every sector those "pending sectors" will either just disappear, or will be reallocated and you'll see it in smart.

Data loss probably was not caused by hardware either.

You can try to return it, but I would not without checking first, since if hardware is fine you'll just waste time and achieve nothing.

[RidwanAlex]

9 hours ago, Archer42 said:

Its hard to tell. Pending sectors might mean issues, or they might mean just data corruption.

The simplest way would be doing full format. Will take a bit of time, but since it checks every sector those "pending sectors" will either just disappear, or will be reallocated and you'll see it in smart.

Data loss probably was not caused by hardware either.

You can try to return it, but I would not without checking first, since if hardware is fine you'll just waste time and achieve nothing.

Right now, I am so scared to use the drive again, afraid it might become corrupt again.

I noticed after plugged in, it takes a long time to detect the drive compared to my other external hdd. At least 30-40 sec.

 

So right now, I should be doing full format ? What is full format and how to do full format ?

Should I be using NTFS or exFat for windows 10 ?

And you recommend for checking, but with which tool ? Should I just check with wd drive utilities complete drive test ?

[Archer42]

5 minutes ago, RidwanAlex said:

So right now, I should be doing full format ? What is full format and how to do full format ?

Should I be using NTFS or exFat for windows 10 ?

Go into disk management, right click the volume, select "format". Uncheck "quick format" checkbox.

After it's done check smart again, something should change there.

 

6 minutes ago, RidwanAlex said:

And you recommend for checking, but with which tool ? Should I just check with wd drive utilities complete drive test ?

Multiple tools exist, i prefer running smart selftests, not sure how to do it in windows though. WD tool is, most  likely, fine for this.

[RidwanAlex]

6 minutes ago, Archer42 said:

Go into disk management, right click the volume, select "format". Uncheck "quick format" checkbox.

After it's done check smart again, something should change there.

 

Multiple tools exist, i prefer running smart selftests, not sure how to do it in windows though. WD tool is, most  likely, fine for this.

Okay, right now I am doing the full format, I can see the write disk speed capped at 30MB/s because of usb2.0

I think this full format gonna take me another 12-16 hours.

 

My mobo dead back then, which has usb 3.0 and I go to store buying a cheap mobo which comes with usb 2.0

I never knew lacking usb 3.0 will suffer so much in terms of speed. I still remember I managed to get 80-120MB/s with usb3.0

 

Surface test, drive testing, full format looks like need to have faster read/write speed to complete faster.

 

[Archer42]

24 minutes ago, RidwanAlex said:

Okay, right now I am doing the full format, I can see the write disk speed capped at 30MB/s because of usb2.0

I think this full format gonna take me another 12-16 hours.

 

My mobo dead back then, which has usb 3.0 and I go to store buying a cheap mobo which comes with usb 2.0

I never knew lacking usb 3.0 will suffer so much in terms of speed. I still remember I managed to get 80-120MB/s with usb3.0

 

Surface test, drive testing, full format looks like need to have faster read/write speed to complete faster.

 

Yes, on usb 2.0 it will be really slow...

You can always buy pci-e x1 usb 3.0 controller if you wanted to, they are dirt cheap.

 

[RidwanAlex]

On 3/7/2021 at 3:35 AM, Archer42 said:

Yes, on usb 2.0 it will be really slow...

You can always buy pci-e x1 usb 3.0 controller if you wanted to, they are dirt cheap.

 

Okay, time to update the situation right now.

I resumed hard disk check bad sector with hd tune from where I left while my home blackout.

And it's 100% fine, no bad sector.

Then I resumed to use slow format like u suggest, I search a lot about this, it's called low level format / zero fill drive.

So I was using minitool partition - wipe disk - zero fill the drive, it took me 32 hours to complete, lol.

After that , I use WD drive utilities to erase the drive with NTFS format, and recheck with crystaldiskinfo.

It's still showing caution, same status, nothing changed.

 

Then the support incident I create on WD website finally got replied, it just asking me to troubleshoot the drive, is the light on, is disk management can detect the drive ? is it same on other pc? did u test with other cable ?

He also said to test smart status on wd drive utilities, if it can't be detected, it need to be replaced.

It's as if the drive need to be completely dead to get the warranty.

 

I replied all of them my problem doesn't have anything with that, and answer all the question.

1. My drive was corrupted and lost 2TB of data, there's no way I gonna use that again.

2. The drive only detected after 30-45 sec after plugged in, there must be something wrong already.

3. Crystaldiskinfo show caution, it's clearly a sign the drive can fail any moment.

 

I just proceed to RMA the product and hoping to get a new replacement. If the drive need to be completely dead to get a replacement, then it's not worth buying on official store with higher price.

 

Seriously, if they return the same product without replacement, I never buy warranty product anymore. If warranty only applied if the product completely dead, I should just buy normal product and use marketplace warrranty protection.