Should/Can I RMA this?

[DeScruff]

Anyone know anything about WD's Warranties?
I have a WD10EZEX, and I just noticed its making weird noises. I'm not sure if its 100% normal and I just noticed it, or not. It sounds very similar to coil whine - I actually thought it was my GPU for a day or 2.
I opened up CrystalDiskInfo to check if anything was wrong, and its telling me "Caution [C5] Current Pending Sector Count : 8" - I dunno how bad/average that is, and I have no idea when that started.

The drive has ~16 days left in it's warranty so I kinda want to know if everything is A OK, or if  this is something covered by the warranty, and I should hurry and RMA, or whatever its called this drive.
I'm backing everything up as I type just to be sure (and I kinda needed to do that anyway, my backup was getting too outdated.)

[Electronics Wizardy]

I would. Current pending sectors are bad.

[DeScruff]

7 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

I would. Current pending sectors are bad.

Like how bad? I'm gonna take your advice and start up the RMA right now.
Still like to know for future reference.

[SCHISCHKA]

19 minutes ago, Sypran said:

Anyone know anything about WD's Warranties?
I have a WD10EZEX, and I just noticed its making weird noises. I'm not sure if its 100% normal and I just noticed it, or not. It sounds very similar to coil whine - I actually thought it was my GPU for a day or 2.
I opened up CrystalDiskInfo to check if anything was wrong, and its telling me "Caution [C5] Current Pending Sector Count : 8" - I dunno how bad/average that is, and I have no idea when that started.

The drive has ~16 days left in it's warranty so I kinda want to know if everything is A OK, or if  this is something covered by the warranty, and I should hurry and RMA, or whatever its called this drive.
I'm backing everything up as I type just to be sure (and I kinda needed to do that anyway, my backup was getting too outdated.)

and everyone gives me shit when i say bad things about WD blue!

Mine also died but just after warranty period ended.

[DeScruff]

6 minutes ago, SCHISCHKA said:

and everyone gives me shit when i say bad things about WD blue!

Mine also died but just after warranty period ended.

heh... Funny thing... When I first bought this drive on Amazon, the first one was DOA, and they replaced it. - Took a while though cause of the Holiday season if I recall...
I'm now hopping that any of the systems I built for people that had this drive are all ok >_>

[Mighty_Miro_WD]

Hi @Sypran!

 

The Current Pending Sectors parameter is showing if there are active visible bad sectors on the drive that cannot be read but are still visible to the operating system. These are dangerous and cause a lot of problems, which is why I would suggest to change the drive. Since the HDD is still under warranty and you've got the HDD from a retailer you can contact their support and arrange a RMA so you can get a replacement unit.

 

Hope this help and let me know how it went.

[DeScruff]

4 hours ago, Mighty_Miro_WD said:

Hi @Sypran!

 

The Current Pending Sectors parameter is showing if there are active visible bad sectors on the drive that cannot be read but are still visible to the operating system. These are dangerous and cause a lot of problems, which is why I would suggest to change the drive. Since the HDD is still under warranty and you've got the HDD from a retailer you can contact their support and arrange a RMA so you can get a replacement unit.

 

Hope this help and let me know how it went.

Alright!
I spent yesterday backing everything thing up. But I also did a wipe on the thing because I generally don't like the idea of sending out drive with personal data on it.
However this seems to have cleared the "Pending Sectors"... - I don't trust the drive, and I'm going to send it out later today. but this shouldn't affect anything right?

[Mighty_Miro_WD]

13 hours ago, Sypran said:

Alright!
I spent yesterday backing everything thing up. But I also did a wipe on the thing because I generally don't like the idea of sending out drive with personal data on it.
However this seems to have cleared the "Pending Sectors"... - I don't trust the drive, and I'm going to send it out later today. but this shouldn't affect anything right?

If I understand this correctly after the wiping no Pending sectors were detected by the program or? Did you run another test to check the health of the unit?You can use our tool to check the drive if you want:

http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=ltvSWd

 

This is possible by the way because basically there are two types of bad sectors - software and hardware based.

 

Hardware ones are caused by physical damage or becoming magnetically fixed, and they are unrepairable. Software bad sectors on the other hand are when something called an Error Correction Code (ECC) doesn't match the contents of the hard drive. These can be repaired by overwriting the data on the drive with zeroes, which you did and if nothing is detected by the diagnostic program then it should be OK to use. Of course, if you don't trust the unit you should still be able to RMA it back and get a replacement.