WD 2TB FASS - drive issues

[aphasia]

woke up today and found my WD 2TB drive unresponsive.

i have 3 drives in machine, ocz 120GB v2e (boot), WD 300GB raptor (programs/games), WD 2TB fass (storage).

tried to open a avi and explorer froze. crtl-alt-del and terminated the media player and restarted explorer.exe.

restarted the machine (took awhile to shut down), drive was recogised by bios and booted back into windows fine. windows explorer still displays the WD 2TB drives contents unless i try to open a file (only tried a couple of media files). dl'ed WD data lifegard diag and ran a quick scan. the WD fass failed one of the SMART status checks. currently running the extended test (about an 1hr left) so hopefully have a better idea of wtf is going on.

i know some of the earlier WD black models has issues but i thought the FASS series were ok. the drive is under 6mths old and i'm a little annoyed. anyone else had problems with the FASS model?

 

[aphasia]

downloaded 'Western Digital Data LifeGuard Diagnostics' as suggested on the WD support page and ran both 'Quick' and 'Extended' tests. both test failed,

======================================
Test Option: QUICK TEST
Model Number: WDC WD2001FASS-00W2B0
Unit Serial Number: WD-WMAYxxxxxxxx
Firmware Number: 05.01D05
Capacity: 2000.40 GB
SMART Status: PASS
Test Result: FAIL
Test Error Code: 06-Quick Test on drive 1 did not complete! Status code = 07 (Failed read test element), Failure Checkpoint = 97 (Unknown Test) SMART self-test did not complete on drive 1!
Test Time: 02:49:11, May 16, 2011

Test Option: EXTENDED TEST
Model Number: WDC WD2001FASS-00W2B0
Unit Serial Number: WD-WMAYxxxxxxxx
Firmware Number: 05.01D05
Capacity: 2000.40 GB
SMART Status: PASS
Test Result: FAIL
Test Error Code: 08-Error was detected while repairing bad sectors.
Test Time: 12:17:19, May 16, 2011
======================================

i emailed WD support, they suggested i run the windows error checking (chkdsk?) tool in 'disk properties' which passed,

WD support said if the windows disk error check failed, they'd replace my drive. now i'm confused, WD own disk check failed yet windows checking utility fixed and passed my disk.

i don't really trust this disk anymore but i think WD will say my disk is fine. if this disk was a couple of years old i wouldn't care that much (even tho disk has 5year warrantee), but this disk isn't even 6mths old.

any suggestions?

 

[drescherjm]

WD support said if the windows disk error check failed, they'd replace my drive. now i'm confused, WD own disk check failed yet windows checking utility fixed and passed my disk.

That is because bad sectors get remapped (by the drive) with good ones when overwritten. All modern hard drives have thousands of additional sectors located throughout the disk which are in a spare pool for sectors that are having problems. When the drive detects a sector is weak or bad and it can replace it without loosing your data it will automatically replace it with a spare. If there was already data on the sector and it can not recover the sector does not get replaced until the os overwrites it. This is a problem because the data in that sector probably is lost.

 

[aphasia]

That is because bad sectors get remapped (by the drive) with good ones when overwritten. All modern hard drives have thousands of additional sectors located throughout the disk which are in a spare pool for sectors that are having problems. When the drive detects a sector is weak or bad and it can replace it without loosing your data it will automatically replace it with a spare. If there was already data on the sector and it can not recover the sector does not get replaced until the os overwrites it. This is a problem because the data in that sector probably is lost.

thanks for the info drescherjm, tho i'm still wary about putting my data back on the drive (move it all off when i first noticed the issue). i've never had a drive dumping sectors this early in its life. i'd rather get a replacement drive or get a credit for a new one rather than worry for the next 4 1/2 years.

 

[dustNbone]

Yeah I wouldn't trust it either, this drive is dying by all accounts. Just because it passed a chkdsk doesn't mean anything, as was stated above. What I see in your chkdsk results is that it was unable to read from 9 sectors in your free space, and added those sectors to it's bad list. These are sectors that weren't marked bad by the drive, and were still available for data to be written to as far as Windows is concerned. Only because you ran chkdsk before data was written to these sectors did you not lose data as a result. This leads me to believe that you have probably already lost data on the drive and will continue to lose more. The drive failed WDs own low level tests, I don't see how they can say that a filesystem level check is somehow a more valid test. They should replace that drive.

Dustin