WD1501FASS Designed Service Life

This is just too suspect for me. I purchased 2 WD1501FASS Drives for my computer 1/26/2011.

I installed them in as stand alone drives (not in a RAID) and used them for a year and 8 months with no issues. Then my computer started to just stop for periods of a time, just freeze. I couldn’t figure out what was going wrong. I tested the RAM, the CPU, Pulled cards, etc…

I got sick of it and decided to reinstall my OS. So since I was going to do it I decided to purchase a new SSD and install the OS on it so that I could access my data on my existing drives.

Worked great for a couple of weeks then the computer started freezing again and generally running like doo doo. I went to the event logs and now I see all kinds or “drive Controller” problems on my computer. So I am like oh great my motherboard is dead. Reboot my computer again and the File system is GONE on one of my 1.5 TB Drives. It shows in the device manger as a RAW device.

Freaking great… So I run easeUS on the drive to get some data off of it and succeed in doing so. I reformat the drive (not quick) and I see some bad sector comments in the event log but I don’t’ really care. Drive is back up as my D: reboot… RAW again and my computer runs like doo doo…

So to be clear, with the os on my SSD, the 1.5 TB wd1501fass with no recognizable file system on it my computer is doo doo.

I open the case swap cables, ports, etc… I come to the realization that when this 1.5 TB drive is installed the computer runs poorly. Doesn’t have to be formatted, it’s mere presence caused the computer to suffer.

So I remove the drive and my computer is instantly back to normal. I connect the drive to ta external driver reader (USB 3.0 if it matters) and it doesn’t spin up and I hear clicking now…

Bingo, drive failed! Mission accomplished. I RMA the Drive and a replacement is sent. I install the replacement and all is good again……

Now a mere 2 weeks later… Same symptoms on my second WD1501FASS are appearing… I just removed the drive, connected it to my External Vantec USB Drive reader and am running EaseUS on it. The recovery is going fine. ( I am only recovering this way as it is faster then downloading my data from Carbonite)

However this can’t be a coincidence in my eyes. Is it normal for drives to fail practically simultaneously?

I should mention that I do have other older drives in my computer and I have no problems with them.

Here are the drives I have installed:

WD2002FAEX (what WD replaced my first 1.5 TB Failed drive with)
WD740GD
WD7500AAKS
WD1001FALS
Corsair Force 3 SSD
And the now troubled WD1501FASS

Out of all those drives the only ones I have had trouble with are the WD1501FASS and the troubles come up at almost the exact same times…. Is this normal?

I do not have SMART Disabled on the drives and nothing showed up in the boot/bios the always reported SMART as being OK, same goes for the intel Matrix Storage console and again, NO Raid was being used on these drives.

Thanks for bearing with me this long. But my point of additional concern is I purchased 4 WD 2 TB WD20EARX drives for use in my sinology NAS. Now I am NOT running a “Raid” on these, and are rather relying on the Synology “hybrid RAID” that does not require any Striping or TLE settings, etc… Its been running like a champ for 6 months with no issues, but now I am concerned that WD is going to set off their Programed End of Life feature on these drives too and I will actually loose data….

And all this is made worse by the fact that when WD replace my 1.5 TB drive, they sent a 2 TB which is fine but they sent it with a 4 month warranty!!! It should at least terminate at the date of the original 5 year Warranty on the Caviar Black!!!

Try running an extended test with DLG

you can also try HD Tune and chkdsk

it’s too much of a coincidence that the two ( same model ) drives are having similar issues