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WD Red drives?

Well I had a 2TB seagate fail in my NAS this morning (the reallocated sector count had been increasing for some weeks so I was expecting it TBH).

Not to worry though, I had already bought a 3TB RED to replace it which I have installed this morning, and after less than one hour it is also dead with a ton of reallocated sectors. It has now failed it's own SMART test so will have to go back for RMA. Not very confidence inspiring!

Does anyone actually make decent hard-drives any more? I remember when I originally set up the NAS with 4x2TB seagates (in the good old days of cheap discs) I went through a total of SEVEN of them before I managed to get 4 that worked, and obviously one of those has now failed too.

Dismal failure rate TBH. Maybe I should just buy some enterprise drives instead and feel the wallet pain :(

Paste from the NAS log

Sat Nov 3 13:17:06 WET 2012 Detected increasing reallocated sector count[1875] on disk 3 [WDC WD30EFRX-68AX9N0, WD-WMC1T0453435] after poweron 0 hours. This often indicates an impending failure. Please be prepared to replace this disk to maintain data redundancy.
Sat Nov 3 13:07:32 WET 2012 Detected increasing reallocated sector count[1267] on disk 3 [WDC WD30EFRX-68AX9N0, WD-WMC1T0453435] after poweron 0 hours. This often indicates an impending failure. Please be prepared to replace this disk to maintain data redundancy.
Sat Nov 3 13:03:30 WET 2012 Detected increasing reallocated sector count[737] on disk 3 [WDC WD30EFRX-68AX9N0, WD-WMC1T0453435] after poweron 0 hours. This often indicates an impending failure. Please be prepared to replace this disk to maintain data redundancy.
Sat Nov 3 12:59:24 WET 2012 Detected increasing reallocated sector count[276] on disk 3 [WDC WD30EFRX-68AX9N0, WD-WMC1T0453435] after poweron 0 hours. This often indicates an impending failure. Please be prepared to replace this disk to maintain data redundancy.
Sat Nov 3 12:55:14 WET 2012 Detected increasing reallocated sector count[134] on disk 3 [WDC WD30EFRX-68AX9N0, WD-WMC1T0453435] after poweron 0 hours. This often indicates an impending failure. Please be prepared to replace this disk to maintain data redundancy.
Sat Nov 3 12:38:12 WET 2012 RAID sync started on volume C.
 
andrewuk said:
<snip>

Does anyone actually make decent hard-drives any more? I remember when I originally set up the NAS with 4x2TB seagates (in the good old days of cheap discs) I went through a total of SEVEN of them before I managed to get 4 that worked, and obviously one of those has now failed too.

Dismal failure rate TBH. Maybe I should just buy some enterprise drives instead and feel the wallet pain :(
Click to expand...
Who did you buy from?
 
The WD Red came from SCAN (UK supplier) and I think Misco/Amazon supplied the Seagates.

Scan generally send them in tons of bubble wrap, and in the case of Misco in HDD boxes with foam which is why I tend to use these 2 as preference.

I bought a disc from Amazon once and it came in a card-board sleeve (like a DVD!) just in it's antistatic bag :eek:
Luckily their returns dept. are excellent, because of course it was totally dead by the time it landed on my door mat :rolleyes:

I have the RED in my spare PC now running the wd tool on it, and it's just clicking and clunking away so it's definitely knackered.
 
Hi everyone, new member here. Found this thread searching for WD red problems.
I think I may have a bad one. What do you guys think?

I bought 4 WD red 2Tb's to use in my WHS2011 box, just as storage, the OS is on a small SSD connected to the MB SATA port.
The reds are connected to a Highpoint RocketRAID 640.
Anyway, at first the RAID card found them all OK, and I started building the RAID 5 array. As you can see in the event log, after 4 hours (20%) it failed due to an error on disk 4.
I restarted it, and it carried on from 20%, took about 20 hours to finish, but it did.
So I partitioned it the way I wanted and formatted etc.
At this point the RAID software showed good SMART data for all drives, all healthy.
But after a server reebot, I didn't get past the RAID BIOS. It stopped with a critical warning, disk 4 is missing.
I pulled that disk and popped it into my desktop, it's showing up there OK, but I'm worried about using it again in the server. Should I RMA it?
Thanks.

Raid.png
 
I would do two things. Run whatever diags on the drive you can download from WD. Then, if you haven't populated your array with any data, swap drive four with another drive in the array, say drive 3 and see if the controller complains about drive 4 again, could be something wonky with your array controller. If you go into the BIOS of the controller are there any diags in there? What does it say about drive 4?
 
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OK thanks, I've just download the tool from WD, but I'll need to put the drive back into my desktop to run it.
I put it back into the server just out of curiosity, and it booted just fine. The array is showing as healthy.
I'm even very impressed with the speed of it, I copied a 1Gb file to it in seconds! Windows reported the transfer at 110Mb/s, which is way more than I was hoping for, so I really hope these drives don't prove to be unreliable.

UPDATE, it just failed again. Seems my RAID card has a buzzer, lol, and it's loud! I was in the kitchen and I thought my smoke detector had gone off!
Anyway I logged into the RAID software and it showed drive 4 had failed. That's all I need to see, putting in an RMA request now.
 
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Western Digital has produced nothing but garbage since the flood. I don't know what's going on, but I wouldn't take one of their new drives if you gave it to me.
 
JJ Johnson said:
Western Digital has produced nothing but garbage since the flood. I don't know what's going on, but I wouldn't take one of their new drives if you gave it to me.
Click to expand...

Agreed. I have 5 pre flood WD drives that have never gave any problems. 2 Raptors, 1 black, and 2 greens in a NAS. All been going strong for years now.
This red didn't even make it past the RAID build!
I have it connected to my desktop now, running the WD test program.....3 hours remaining.
 
Another update, seems you were on to something ashman.
The drive passed all the tests, so I put it back in the server, but swapped drives 3 and 4 around. An hour later, drive 4 failed again.
So it seems it's not a bad disk after all. Damn. Now I'm at a loss. Time to strip it down and check all the cables.
 
Bought 5 new WD 3TB Reds last week to put in a Synology NAS...one started failing instantly (sector re-allocations like crazy). Did an Advance RMA from WD..and waited 2 days for an update. I finally called and was told they didn't have any drives to send out for RMA. I returned it to NewEgg and ordered another one....
 
_Always_ RMA a drive with the retailer (if within their return period) before resorting to the manufacturer. You'll get a new drive from the retailer, a refurb from the manufacturer.
 
JJ Johnson said:
_Always_ RMA a drive with the retailer (if within their return period) before resorting to the manufacturer. You'll get a new drive from the retailer, a refurb from the manufacturer.
Click to expand...

Wanted a drive faster and didn't want to wait to ship back/reship a new one. I don't care if it's a refurb...can't say I'm too impressed at the quality of new. ;)
 
And always have a cold spare on hand so that you're not down while waiting for a replacement drive. What's even the point of using RAID if it means you accept being down when a drive fails?
 
JJ Johnson said:
And always have a cold spare on hand so that you're not down while waiting for a replacement drive. What's even the point of using RAID if it means you accept being down when a drive fails?
Click to expand...

Why would I be down? RAID5..lose one drive and keep going. I plan to order a spare next week. I may grab a few more and put them in my larger Synology (DS3611xs). Right now I have the 5 in a DS1010+.
 
NetJunkie said:
Why would I be down? RAID5..lose one drive and keep going.
Click to expand...

Murphy's law. If it were me and the data was important and I didn't have a backup for whatever reason, I'd keep the drives powered off until the spare is in-hand.
 
09Avenger said:
Another update, seems you were on to something ashman.
The drive passed all the tests, so I put it back in the server, but swapped drives 3 and 4 around. An hour later, drive 4 failed again.
So it seems it's not a bad disk after all. Damn. Now I'm at a loss. Time to strip it down and check all the cables.
Click to expand...


Are there any diags you can run in the BIOS of the raid controller? Could be bad cable...
 
odditory said:
Murphy's law. If it were me and the data was important and I didn't have a backup for whatever reason, I'd keep the drives powered off until the spare is in-hand.
Click to expand...

No data on the drives. All new drives for a new build. And if I do have a failure on an existing array the LAST thing I'm going to do is spin down the remaining drives and hope they spin up when a replacement arrives.
 
andrewuk said:
Does anyone actually make decent hard-drives any more? I remember when I originally set up the NAS with 4x2TB seagates (in the good old days of cheap discs) I went through a total of SEVEN of them before I managed to get 4 that worked, and obviously one of those has now failed too.
Click to expand...

This has not been my experience at all.

I have quite a few hard drives in use throughout the house of different vintages.

4 WD Green 3TB in my NAS
2 WD Green 2TB in my NAS
1 WD Green 2TB hooked up to my FiOS DVR via eSATA for more storage
1 WD Black 1TB in older stepsons rig
1 WD Blue 320GB in old HTPC (about to be retired)
1 older 400GB PATA Seagate drive in younger stepsons rig.
2 really old 100GB WD PATA drives I used as a RAID0 stripe for my desktop back in 2002 in college, but now serve in USB enclosures for data dumps and such. (man are these loud)

They all work perfectly. Never had a DOA, never had a hard drive failure.

Heck, even my old 34GB IBM Deskstar I bought in 1999, freshman year in college still works perfectly (34GB in 1999 = You'll NEVER need this much space, man, why did you waste money on such a large drive :p )

I have been building my own computers (with hard drives) since I was 12 in 1992, and put together my first 286 with a 10MB MFM hard drive, and I have NEVER experienced a hard drive failure.

I've lost data over time, either due to my own stupidity, or random file system failures, but hard drive hardware has never failed on me in any way, shape or form.

I do have my file server running with two redundant parity drives just in case, but hard drive failures have never been a problem I've had.

That being said, it seems to matter more where you get your drives from and how they were shipped, than the brand they are.

Here in the U.S. people seem to prefer Amazon over Newegg, as they tend to package the drives better (though I have ordered from both without issue). They also seem to prefer shipping with FedEx over UPS or USPS, as they tend to handle the boxes with more care, but again, I've used both FedEx and UPS without issue...

Do you live at the end of a very bumpy road? :p
 
NetJunkie said:
Why would I be down? RAID5..lose one drive and keep going. I plan to order a spare next week. I may grab a few more and put them in my larger Synology (DS3611xs). Right now I have the 5 in a DS1010+.
Click to expand...

RAID 5 is actually recommended against these days, because of these vulnerabilities.

Example:
You have some form of RAID5 array (or any other system with one redundant/parity drive).

One drive dies. You congratulate yourself for having been smart and going with a redundant system.

While you wait for your replacement drive - however - you continue to use the drive in its unprotected state. During this time, work load is higher on the remaining drives than it would have been with a full array. Furthermore, when you get your replacement drive, and rebuild/recalculate the array all drives in the system work very hard.

If any of the remaining drives in the system is marginal, you may just have - with all this extra load - brought it over the edge by working it hard, killed it, and lost all your data.

Best practice is to have one redundant drive more than you think you'll need, that way your system is still protected while you are replacing your dead drive. If you value your data, that is.

This is why I run my FreeNAS box in RAIDz2, which is equivalent to RAID6 (but more secure from loss, due to some specifics in the ZFS file system)
 
I'm very familiar with the different RAID levels and their pros and cons (Disclaimer: I sell enterprise storage for a living). I'll either have a hotspare here if I stick to RAID5 in this DS1010+ (5 bay unit) or I may just order more drives and do a 6 or 8 drive RAID6 set in my DS3611xs. In the end it's just media and while a hassle, nothing irreplaceable would be lost.

My initial post was to complain about lack of drives for RMA...especially advance RMA given that these Red drives are supposed to have better support than regular WDs.
 
NetJunkie said:
I'm very familiar with the different RAID levels and their pros and cons (Disclaimer: I sell enterprise storage for a living). I'll either have a hotspare here if I stick to RAID5 in this DS1010+ (5 bay unit) or I may just order more drives and do a 6 or 8 drive RAID6 set in my DS3611xs. In the end it's just media and while a hassle, nothing irreplaceable would be lost.

My initial post was to complain about lack of drives for RMA...especially advance RMA given that these Red drives are supposed to have better support than regular WDs.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I'm aware that you know what you're (you've actually helped me with this stuff a number of times on here)

That response was more directed at others who might read and do without understanding the risks like you do :p
 
Zarathustra[H];1039295870 said:
This has not been my experience at all.

--- stuff snipped
Do you live at the end of a very bumpy road? :p
Click to expand...

Well this is the UK we're talking about - all our roads are bumpy and covered with potholes ;)

I think you've been lucky with your hard-discs. Having said that I have not had that many fail on me and I've been building systems for 20+ years now.

I have a couple of old 40GB Seagates lying around, and an 80GB WD that still work perfectly (albeit a bit noisily now, these were pre-FDB motors) with no bad sectors. I've also had plenty of drives from WD/Seagate and Samsung over the years and almost all the failures I mentioned with my Seagates and this latest WD Red have been within the first few days of use (or complete DOA). I also had a 500GB Samsung F3 fail on me aswell - just click of death one morning. No prior SMART warning.

I find that once they get past 6 months they usually last for a good while and I tend to sell them on, or use them as 2nd back-ups.

I do think the larger capacity (or rather drives with larger platters and therefore density) seem more prone to failure. I guess the manufacturing tolerances when squeezing in that many bits are much tigher than they used to be...

I RMA'd my dead red (lol) today so hopefully I'll have a replacement by the weekend. I'm nervous with my NAS still running in a degraded state although all my super important stuff is backed up anyway.
I also discovered my dead 2TB Seagate is still in warranty, seems like it had a 3 year one. It pre-dated the floods so I guess they weren't so stingy back then. I'll be RMAing that back to Seagate although the model is discontinued for a long time now so I'm not sure what they will send back as a replacement!
 
ashman said:
Are there any diags you can run in the BIOS of the raid controller? Could be bad cable...
Click to expand...

No, there don't seem to be. Just the SMART data which says all drives are OK.
I don't want to speak too soon, but I checked all the cables, which was a pain as they run under the motherboard to the connectors on the caddys. The cable on caddy 4 was at a very slight angle, so I pushed it fully home, reassembled everything and it's been running for a few hours now without any errors.
'Hopefully' that was the cause of the problem. I'll let it idle for a day or two before I start putting data on it. Just in case!
Thanks for the advice.
 
Ain't fun to read the last few pages here :(

Geting a 4x 3TB RED drives to expand my curent raid 6 array of 25x 3TB Hitatchi 3TB drives.
Current array is almost full so need to expand it ASAP :(

Guess i am best of puting these 4x RED drives in a own array for a few weeks for testing.
 
Merlinen said:
Ain't fun to read the last few pages here :(

Geting a 4x 3TB RED drives to expand my curent raid 6 array of 25x 3TB Hitatchi 3TB drives.
Current array is almost full so need to expand it ASAP :(

Guess i am best of puting these 4x RED drives in a own array for a few weeks for testing.
Click to expand...

I just installed 5 x 3TB RED in my Microserver. So far so good...
But my drives came properly packed directly from the distributor in Sweden ;)
 
I was curious what my speeds should be on my raid array with 16 3TB WD REDS.

I have 16 drives in a Norco DS-24E enclosure connected to an Areca 1882x card in RAID6.

My read speeds are about 1037MB/s and my write about 231MB/s. That seems slow to me, am I right?
 
Aesma said:
Looks like two pages ago all over again.
Click to expand...

I'm just generally curious, as I thought I was a heavy storage user, and I have nowhere near that amount of data.

I have an easy time understanding organizations with many employees having large storage needs, but they tend to not use consumer drives.

So when I see someone with a HUGE array of consumer drives it just peaks my curiosity about what its used for :p
 
Merlinen said:
Ain't fun to read the last few pages here :(

Geting a 4x 3TB RED drives to expand my curent raid 6 array of 25x 3TB Hitatchi 3TB drives.
Current array is almost full so need to expand it ASAP :(

Guess i am best of puting these 4x RED drives in a own array for a few weeks for testing.
Click to expand...

I'm kind of curious about a couple of things:

1.) What kind of case are these 29 drives in? Must be pretty massive?

2.) What type of RAID is it? Hardware? ZFS?

3.) Most raid solutions do not allow for expanding the number of drives in the array, are you actually destroying the volume and recreating it when you add the 4 additional drives? If so, how are you backing up the 62.75TB on there? ((25-2)*3*(1000^4)/(1024^4))
 
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