WD Red 4TB - Current Pending Sector Count

M

mda

2[H]4U
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Mar 23, 2011
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Hello all,

Just would like to know if there's any way to repair a drive that has a SMART reading:
"Current Pending Sector Count" with value '8'

The drive seems to work fine, Windows 10 checkdisk doesn't see any problems with the drive, but Windows 10 is taking a looooong time to boot with the drive. There doesn't seem to be any other big problems (such as many bad sectors reported) with the drive.

I'm looking into replacement drives now but I'd like to know if I can still repair and repurpose this one.

Google/other forums say there is some luck with writing 0s to the drive, but this will obviously erase everything. Does this work? Do I have other options?

Thanks! :)
 
jmilcher said:
You could always just back it up and write zeros.
Click to expand...
Yep, that is the only way to help it reallocate those sectors. If performing an image backup, after restoring I would run chkdsk /b on it to have windows work out its own mapping of bad sectors.
 
Thanks all.

One of my NAS WD Red 4TB died last night after about 3 years, very light use and about less than 10000 power on hours. Looks like I'll really need a replacement. Probably will go with a Seagate Barracuda Pro 6TB for the desktop, and if I can revive this Red, I'll chuck it into the NAS.

So far, 3/3 of my WD Red 4TBs, all from different batches have had issues.
 
Welp, that sucks. I've seen whispers of notable failure rates with the Reds even though they were meant to run 24/7 and I wish you luck with the 6TB, Seagate seems to have cleaned up its act post-3TB.
 
Yeah, thanks. I hope I don't run into any more issues with these 8TB Reds I have. These things cost quite a bit to replace :/

Funnily enough, the ST3000D I have has outlived the WD Red.

Looks like only WDC's Black Drives and Helium Red (HGST Heliums?) seem reliable. I've also had the 1 TB Blue EZEX drive fail on me after the warranty ran out.
 
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I think that error isnt necessarily regarding bad sectors but sectors that the HDD controller got confused over and isnt sure what to do with them. I've found a low level format sorts it.
 
Yes that could be the case. Currently I have no bad sectors reported on that drive. Waiting on my Barracuda Pro so I can do a low level format on the thing...
 
mda said:
Thanks all.

One of my NAS WD Red 4TB died last night after about 3 years, very light use and about less than 10000 power on hours. Looks like I'll really need a replacement. Probably will go with a Seagate Barracuda Pro 6TB for the desktop, and if I can revive this Red, I'll chuck it into the NAS.

So far, 3/3 of my WD Red 4TBs, all from different batches have had issues.
Click to expand...

I've read reports around that the 4TB Reds have had a pretty high failure rate (backblaze maybe?), the 8TB do not appear to have the same issue.
 
Backblaze has stats for the WD Red 4TB... they aren't terrible because I remember reading through them before buying.

Now they don't have a lot though. I know a lot of them got retired in favor of the larger capacity drives.
 
mda said:
Backblaze has stats for the WD Red 4TB... they aren't terrible because I remember reading through them before buying.

Now they don't have a lot though. I know a lot of them got retired in favor of the larger capacity drives.
Click to expand...
I found it, it was for last quarter, but it was due to the low sample size that the percentage was high 1/45 failed which is 8.87%
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-stats-for-2017/
 
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Must have missed that (the low sample size). Sucks to be me! :|

Just got my 6TB Pro. Let's see how this goes.
 
Eh they're good drives brent, at the end of the day its averages, most are still <1% failure I'll take those odds.
 
Meh. Drive failed while writing 0s. Bye, drive. Going for a warranty now. Hoping for the best. Local distributors only warranty the drive for 1 year, despite WDC's 3 year warranty. :|
 
daglesj said:
I think that error isnt necessarily regarding bad sectors but sectors that the HDD controller got confused over and isnt sure what to do with them. I've found a low level format sorts it.
Click to expand...


You cant lowlevel format todays harddrives. You mean wipe the disk aka write 0 to all sectors ( or other patterns)
Lowlevlet formatting is something complete different.
 
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