Drive seems to have died - any ideas for revival?

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project86

Limp Gawd
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Drive is a WD 8TB white label which is basically their Red Plus CMR drive, from back in 2018 when we all shucked them from external enclosures. Have a 4 bay NAS with 3 of those drives in RAID5 plus an SSD. Was planning on removing the SSD and adding a 4th matching 8TB drive. I powered down my NAS and removed the drive tray just to check the serial number and date etc, in order to make sure the one I was buying matched. Put the drive back in, powered back on, and now my NAS refuses to recognize that drive.

I tried swapping positions with the SSD. It recognizes the SSD in the new location, but still doesn't see the 8TB drive. I then tried an external SATA to USB adapter and tried the drive with a PC, it still doesn't recognize the drive.

Is there anything else I should try or is this drive just done for? Until now it functioned flawlessly, SMART log shows zero errors in raw read, seek error, uncorrectables, etc. It had about 30k power on hours, but that was all sitting in a well cooled NAS with very light use.
 
Spinning drives don't usually disappear like this (SSDs though...). Does it spin up? (you should be able to hear or at least feel it)

Take a close look at the power and data connectors? Maybe something cracked?
 
I know, that's my experience as well so this is an odd thing to have it just die completely. I hear no spinning, no feeling of vibration at all, no warmth when it's plugged in for a long time, no clicking or other signs of life.

Everything looks brand new from a physical perspective. And the NAS still functions in that bay as evidenced by the SSD working fine when I move it over there.
 
Is this one of the drives where if there's 3.3v, the drive won't power on? Might you have solved that with tape that fell off? (I don't think so? I think that nonsense started on bigger drives that are whitelabeled enterprise drives, but still from shucking, so maybe?)

Otherwise... Some hard drives have a serial port on their jumpers or elsewhere might be worth poking at that?

Definitely mysterious!
 
I remember some people reported problems with these drives when used in older systems back then. Mine always worked perfectly both in my PC and with my NAS, so I never had to mess with the tape thing.

I already ordered another and I guess I'll just give up on this drive. Good reminder to always keep backups, and also confirms my decision to run RAID5 and take the hit in overall capacity... this way I didn't lose any data, but I would have if I was just running the drives separately.
 
In earlier times, I could sometimes bring such (full dead) drives back to life by swapping their controller board. Have no idea if such a thing would work today.
 
Many of the schucked drives back to about 6TB were 3.3 issue drives, so that could be an issue. Do you need the data? If it is iretrievable and you need it, don't screw with it (the more you do to try and get it back the worse you can make the situation (especially if it is a head crash)) and get it to a reputable repair facility.
 
I didn't actually lose data, as this was a just one part of the RAID5 configuration. So all I lost was the redundancy layer (and even then it's just movies/music/etc, nothing that isn't replaceable or already backed up to Onedrive etc).

I got the replacement drive installed already and the NAS recognized it as expected, immediately began rebuilding the RAID volume. So I'll soon be back to having redundancy with no data loss.

I saved the external enclosure the new drive was shucked from. Gonna put the old drive in there and see if it works. I figure if there's any chance to revive it, using an enclosure identical to the one it shipped in might be it. If not, I'll trash it, no big deal.
 
project86 said:
Drive is a WD 8TB white label which is basically their Red Plus CMR drive, from back in 2018 when we all shucked them from external enclosures. Have a 4 bay NAS with 3 of those drives in RAID5 plus an SSD. Was planning on removing the SSD and adding a 4th matching 8TB drive. I powered down my NAS and removed the drive tray just to check the serial number and date etc, in order to make sure the one I was buying matched. Put the drive back in, powered back on, and now my NAS refuses to recognize that drive.

I tried swapping positions with the SSD. It recognizes the SSD in the new location, but still doesn't see the 8TB drive. I then tried an external SATA to USB adapter and tried the drive with a PC, it still doesn't recognize the drive.

Is there anything else I should try or is this drive just done for? Until now it functioned flawlessly, SMART log shows zero errors in raw read, seek error, uncorrectables, etc. It had about 30k power on hours, but that was all sitting in a well cooled NAS with very light use.
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Hi,

It sounds like the drive may have failed. However, before determining that the drive is definitely dead, there are a few things you can try:

  1. Check the connections: Make sure that the drive is securely connected to the NAS, both power and data connections.
  2. Try a different power cable: Sometimes power cables can go bad, so try using a different cable to see if that resolves the issue.
  3. Check for firmware updates: Make sure that the NAS and the drive are running the latest firmware.
  4. Check for compatibility: Verify that the drive is compatible with the NAS and that it meets the minimum requirements for RAID configuration.
  5. Run diagnostic software: Some NAS devices have built-in diagnostic software that can help determine if there is a problem with the drive.
If none of these steps resolve the issue and the drive is still not recognized, then the drive may be dead and will need to be replaced.
 
I got a replacement drive which is the same external WD Elements from the same era, containing the same WD80EMAZ white label CMR drive. Shucked that drive and threw it in the NAS, placed my "dead" drive in the enclosure. I figured if anything could get it working, it would be the original hardware it came with. But nope, not recognized at all by any of my PCs. So it's dead for real.

The lesson here is to have a good backup system in place, as drives can go at any time for any reason. Even something as dumb as being removed from the NAS where they otherwise live happily.
 
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