New HDD, but unused for years. Is it dead?

[FRD]

For a few years I have a had 2 WD NAS 3TB drives that were mostly saved inside their packages and tested into a Network Video Recorder back in 2015.
I remember they worked fine when I tested them. One drive is produced in 2013, one in 2015.

After leaving them unused back into their packages for years, lately I got a new NAS and installed them. At first the 2013 drive only had 300GB of the 3TB detected. After scanning it, the NAS said no drive was found in the used slot.

Note that these are the WD NAS drives before the WD Reds released.

 

Is my NAS HDD dead? This has me worried, because warranty is probably long expired. I feel like the $150 or something that it costed before 2015 is wasted. Nowadays I see these drives being sold used for under $50.

How often does it happen that HDDs fail like this out of the box or after 1 use?

Would there still be any way to "save" or replace my drive? Or just go ahead and buy a new one and leave this as is?

[da na]

Well, are they recognized properly in the BIOS of a computer? Try that. Then if so, try CrystalDiskInfo or HWiNFO to find out more

[FRD]

20 hours ago, Mel0nMan said:

Well, are they recognized properly in the BIOS of a computer? Try that. Then if so, try CrystalDiskInfo or HWiNFO to find out more

Will need to try that sometime indeed. When it was in the NAS it said no SMART info was available.

I will try to hook it up to my PC sometime soon when I find the time. I'm afraid for the worst though.

[An0maly_76]

Could be a formatting / partition type issue. I have heard of hard drives going bad from sitting, but I've also seen some sit for years and be fine. I'm just wondering if this might be a partition type compatibility issue (a local shop can test it and see) or possibly a FAT32 vs NTFS formatting issue.

[VascoM]

Hi.Are they really new ? You said "mostly saved"...are trhey not factory sealed  ?.can anyone have used them without yourk knowledge . that would expalin the formatting issues .

[FRD]

On 7/5/2022 at 7:43 AM, VascoM said:

Hi.Are they really new ? You said "mostly saved"...are trhey not factory sealed  ?.can anyone have used them without yourk knowledge . that would expalin the formatting issues .

Hi,

Yes they are really new, straight from the box. However, the defective drive was bought in about 2014, tested, then put back in the box until this year. It was never really used, so it barely made minutes/hours.

I really wonder what happened in those years when it was kept in the package, as the other one is totally fine and working like new (as it should).

Can HDDs die after long periods of no use? Maybe because it never spins up again or something. It was always handled carefully.

[Kilrah]

It's rare but it can happen, just like anything can fail at any time. 

It's typical for things to either fail early or last long without issues, it's possible the drive had a defect and would have failed after a couple of hours, but you only used it for 30 mins so didn't get to see it, etc.

 

It's never a good idea to buy IT equipment that you don't need right now (unless you do need to have a spare available at hand for something of course).

[FRD]

2 hours ago, Kilrah said:

It's rare but it can happen, just like anything can fail at any time. 

It's typical for things to either fail early or last long without issues, it's possible the drive had a defect and would have failed after a couple of hours, but you only used it for 30 mins so didn't get to see it, etc.

 

It's never a good idea to buy IT equipment that you don't need right now (unless you do need to have a spare available at hand for something of course).

That could be possible with this HDD indeed, maybe it was bad from the start.

I agree with what you say. Buying IT stuff to only store can be a gamble too.

 

Actually the backstory is that back then we bought a NVR device, for use to install security cameras and have it record. We never managed to install it because of the software and difficulty. Only this year we decided to try it again and buy a normal NAS to reuse the new harddrives that were put back in their boxes. I can't remember though why there are 2 years difference between the drives though. It could be that the NVR required 2 drives to run and we bought a 2nd one later, but with no luck.

[FRD]

Following up on this topic.

This weekend I connected the NAS HDD to my PC. It was detected, all seemed fine. Just startup time took minutes long, normally it takes seconds with my SSD.

Checked CrystalDiskInfo. It surprisingly showed status Good with only 3 spin-ups and 15 hours up time.

Then I tried to format it on NTFS standard settings. I chose normal formatting (no Quick Formatting) and I left the PC for about 30 minutes. I came back, but it didn't finish.

The drive showed up on My Computer, but I could not access it. Just the icon was there, no size showing up.

Later I tried Quick Formatting, but after a few minutes it gave me "Windows was unable to complete the format". I tried about 3 times. No success.

 

Any help? What can I do next? I doubt if it's dead or not.

[Kilrah]

1 hour ago, FRD said:

I chose normal formatting (no Quick Formatting) and I left the PC for about 30 minutes.

A full format will take several hours.

[FRD]

On 8/29/2022 at 2:32 AM, Kilrah said:

A full format will take several hours.

I will try again using normal formatting, leave it for hours and hope for the best.