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problem w/ 5K4000

T

tschopp

n00b
Joined
Oct 13, 2011
Messages
20
I bought a Hitachi 4TB 5K4000 from ebay. It had a 1.6TB partition with some data on it, the rest of the drive was unallocated. No issues looking around in directories, but I only spent a few seconds since I wanted it wiped. I deleted the partition and tried a quick format of the entire drive. I got some windows error that said it could not format. Tried again with a smaller partition, still no luck. Checked drive alinement with Hitachi alignment tool, it was fine.

I tried a full (non-quick) format, it has been running without error and the drive light is still active (mostly on solid, but blinks occasionally). It has been formatting for about 72 hr, is this a reasonable time for a 4TB drive? Any other suggestions on what I should do?
 
Sounds like you might possibly have a faulty SATA cable. A 4TB drive won't take anywhere near 72 hours to format.
 
tschopp said:
I bought a Hitachi 4TB 5K4000 from ebay. It had a 1.6TB partition with some data on it, the rest of the drive was unallocated. No issues looking around in directories, but I only spent a few seconds since I wanted it wiped. I deleted the partition and tried a quick format of the entire drive. I got some windows error that said it could not format. Tried again with a smaller partition, still no luck. Checked drive alinement with Hitachi alignment tool, it was fine.

I tried a full (non-quick) format, it has been running without error and the drive light is still active (mostly on solid, but blinks occasionally). It has been formatting for about 72 hr, is this a reasonable time for a 4TB drive? Any other suggestions on what I should do?
Click to expand...

72 hours is way too long, something went wrong. What motherboard are you using and what BIOS version does it have? You may have a board that doesn't support 3+TB drives, you could have a bad SATA cable or a bad power connection. Try another power tree connection, change the SATA cable and try another SATA port as well.
 
MB is a Supermicro X9SCL-F Ver 1.0C Bios is Ver 10624 created on 6/30/2011. I put the drive in a supermicro 5 in 3 hotswap bay, I have never had any sata cable issues. I swapped the drive to a different bay so it used a different sata cable / sata port, same problem.
 
In that case, I would say the drive is toast or your motherboard has issues.
 
I am thinking the drive is toast. Since its a 4TB if I RMA it to Hitachi I will get another 4TB Hitachi, correct? The drive was not packed well for shipping when I got it.
 
Rather than rushing to RMA it I wouldn't let the ebay seller off the hook so quickly especially since theres a chance they knew full well it had problems and played dumb.

First thing I'd do is make sure the geometry is correct, since I've heard reports of unscrupulous people buying a 3TB or 4TB drive, and switching labels with a 2TB they already owned then returning or ebaying the 2TB mislabeled as a 4TB. What does it show in terms of size when you run diskmgmt.msc? Maybe you could post a screenshot of your Windows Disk Management screen showing the drive

Second, when you receive a drive, a full format isn't really a conclusive test, nor is it providing realtime feedback in the process. Better is to use a tool like HDTune. First inspect the SMART data - specifically the "reallocated sector count" and make sure that's zero. Second I'd do a full surface scan (the "Error Scan" tab) and make sure it completes without errors. Third, optionally, you can use the "Erase" function + Verify option checked which zero fills the drive and is a form of write test.

Alternately you can use a tool like Hard Disk Sentinel, run the Short SMART test, and Extended SMART test.
 
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odditory said:
Rather than rushing to RMA it I wouldn't let the ebay seller off the hook so quickly especially since theres a chance they knew full well it had problems and played dumb.
Click to expand...

I used to buy used drives off ebay, until I had a series of failures. No longer. It's just not worth the headaches and the risk of lost data.
 
I won't buy drives in general off eBay any more. If there is a particular model that is needed and is still within warranty (so I can at least get an RMA if the seller flakes) I will still take the chance if the price is right. Otherwise, generally you are just buying someone else's problem.
 
odditory said:
Rather than rushing to RMA it I wouldn't let the ebay seller off the hook so quickly especially since theres a chance they knew full well it had problems and played dumb.
Click to expand...

I had contacted the seller, he is willing to refund. I believe his story, that his son bought it and it was incompatible with his MB. That explains the 1.6TB format and some data written to it. Based on the way it was packed I think it died in shipping. RMA is not about letting them off the hook as much meeting both our interests. I wanted a working drive not the money back, and he has no use for the drive.

Various tools show the drive run time is almost entirely due to me, so it shipped with less than 20 hr run time. I can't get it to format at any size and truecrypt is reporting a hardware problem when trying to create a volume. I verified the geometry and model number are correct. It does pass the HD Tune v 2.55 smart check and surface scan (but only 2TB is checked). It hangs on the seatools short drive self test.

I was mostly trying to verify that I was not doing something stupid and there really is a problem with the drive. I am convinced the drive has a problem.

So if I RMA I will get another 4TB Hitachi because WD does not make 4tb, correct?

This is my first try on ebay hard drives, I am reevaluating that. I was hoping to pick up a bunch of 2TB Hitachi, but a RMA if needed with a Hitachi returned is not guaranteed. Seems like a bad idea, to go down that path.

I have had mixed to poor luck with WD over the years so I would rather avoid until it is demonstrated they improved. I had one array of 12 WD RE2 in raid 6, over several years every drive failed. The RMAs were replaced with RE3 and they were rock solid. We had about 40 RE3 drives and I don't think any of them failed. We created a Raid 6 with RE4 on a supermicro SAS expander. It seemed to work fine, but on the first reboot of the server several months after the array was created the expander couldn't connect to the drives. The array was lost (not the data thanks to backup), and all purchases have been Hitachi ever since.
 
tschopp said:
Various tools show the drive run time is almost entirely due to me, so it shipped with less than 20 hr run time.
Click to expand...

You have to be careful with this as with a $5 TTL/Serial adapter it is trivial to completely reset all SMART data on most hard drives (and a number of SSD's as well) including hours used and lifetime errors (even current errors can be silenced, though they will pop back into the map as they are encountered.)
 
mwroobel said:
You have to be careful with this as with a $5 TTL/Serial adapter it is trivial to completely reset all SMART data on most hard drives (and a number of SSD's as well) including hours used and lifetime errors (even current errors can be silenced, though they will pop back into the map as they are encountered.)
Click to expand...

Interesting, Is it possible to spoof the model number and capacity or just reset SMART? I should have clarified. The run time is consistent with the listing of New Other and matches the story.

I have to go with Occam's razor on this. Everything supports the idea that this drive died due to really bad packing. Not that the sticker was swapped in a perfect manner and all the drive settings were changed to support the fraud.
 
tschopp said:
Interesting, Is it possible to spoof the model number and capacity or just reset SMART? I should have clarified. The run time is consistent with the listing of New Other and matches the story.

I have to go with Occam's razor on this. Everything supports the idea that this drive died due to really bad packing. Not that the sticker was swapped in a perfect manner and all the drive settings were changed to support the fraud.
Click to expand...

With Seagate and Hitachi drives I can reset anything I want, spoof anything I want and even add heads and platters that don't exist. With WDC I can clear SMART, more than that depends on the model. That posits that you query the drive on power up, it will fail once you try to actually use the drive though.
 
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