Western Digital WD Black WD1002FAEX Random Freezes

WD Internal Drives Desktop & Mobile Drives
1

Hi Everyone, I’ve bought W.D 1TB Black FAEX driver 2 days ago. I started by connecting it to the GSATA3 and changed the controller to AHCI, After that i got it partitioned using a bootable EASEUS Partition Master dvd. I always liked to have only 2 drives so i made a primary drive for C: which is 101GB and a logical for D: which is 830GB. Went throught installing windows 7 x64 without a problem, Then i installed the drivers(Chipset, Intel SATA Preinstall driver, Lan, Etron USB3.0 Host Controller, etc) after the drivers got installed and pc got restarted i got safely remove hardware and eject media includes the disk. So dude, wt’s ur problem?! Well the thing is after goin through installing my applications and stuff like that the system sometimes freezes for like 5 seconds (sometimes i even’t won’t be able to move my cursor, 2nd when i’m copying, Installing a large sized application the disk start to make a noise(not clicking but like a loading sound).

So here is my questions:

1- What causes that random freezes?

2- Is it normal that that hard make that sound when loading?

3- What is the average copy rate MB/sec for that WD1002FAEX when connected trough SATA3?

4- How i can be able to fix this problem?

Pc Spec:

  • Processor: Core i5-2400, 3.10GHz, 6MB Cache, LGA1155.

  • Motherboard: GIGABYTE GA-P61A-D3.

  • RAM: Kingston (KVR1333D3N9/4G) 4GB-10600 CL9.

  • VGA: PNY GEFORCE 9600GT (yeah it’s kinda creepy and old :D).

  • Hard Disk: WD Black WD1002FAEX.

  • PSU: XFX PRO550W Core Edition.

Sorry for the long post but i wanted to explain everything about it to make it easier for guys to understand and give the proper answer, Thanks.

2

I’ve been battling a similar problem, sadly, I haven’t come any closer to an answer other than the HDD is defective and needs to be replaced, which is terrible because like you, I’ve also shelled out for a 1TB caviar Black and you’d think a company with this kind of prestige would have a formula for this kind of thing. I’m about 12 hours of troubleshooting away from RMA’ing.

Antec Twelve Hundred Tower

DH77KC Intel Mobo

CPU: Core i5 @ 3.8GHz Turbo

RAM: G. Skill 16Gb DDR3 @ 1600MHz

VGA: Galaxy Nvidia GTX 550ti 2Gb

HDD: WD 1TB Caviar Black

SSD: Samsung 830 series @ 128gb

PSU: Apevia 750w Bronze PLUS

3

yeah man it’s **bleep**, But i still dunno if this is a defected drive or that is normal speed! :neutral_face:

Here are some tests i made that maybe would help find an answer…

HD Tune Test:

http://www.pictureshack.us/images/19730_1.png

http://www.pictureshack.us/images/17290_2.png
(Dunno why this error is shown, I’m using a new cable that came with the board, Does this may have something to do with the speed or is it some kinda of normal error?)
http://www.pictureshack.us/images/14823_3.png

http://www.pictureshack.us/images/67375_4.png

http://www.pictureshack.us/images/70124_5.png

http://www.pictureshack.us/images/53251_6.png

http://www.pictureshack.us/images/91548_7.png

Copy Speed:
http://www.pictureshack.us/images/5298_Copy.png

No jumpers installed, and btw i read here somewhere that there is a utility “WDspeed” that may fix this, anyone can confirm that ?

4

I have that drive and no issues…

I do have a SATA II motherboard controller though not 3

maybe testing with the jumper setting for forcing the drive to slow speed

would help test it out ?

http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/search/1/a_id/5387#jumper

makes sure to read the note though :wink:

I have seen weird problems with AHCI enabled and after disabling more problems.

But i would test with that on and off (my board doesn’t have AHCI)

Did you run drive diag tests ? Does it say anything is wrong ?

I have used that program to speed test my drive but at Sata 2 speeds so i dunno if you wanna see that.

What i would look for though is if the test bottoms out on you on the graph…

I’ve been using that tool to test a lot drives for a long time and when there is a problem

there is a noticable performance drop(s) in the graph results.

I’m suspicious about your drivers…

Are the default windows drivers doable ? Test with and with out ?

It would be smart to try everything possible before doing an RMA

so you don’t get another drive back and go through the same **bleep** again lol

edit:

i looked at your benchmark and it looks ok to me…

I’ll post my SATA 2 benchmark so you can see what mine looks like…

http://www.pictureshack.us/images/81876_black-test.png

5

“Important: Caviar Black drives that have a model number of WD1002FAEX-00Y9A0 use the SATA 3.0 Gb/s pin layout - setting Jumpers 5 & 6 on these model drives will enable OPT1 which will set your drive to 1.5 Gb/s. Please Contact Us with any questions or issues with the jumper settings on this model drive.”

So I don’t think that the jumper would do much for it. I ran the Data Lifeguard Diagnostic tests, and that was the result:

This is the copy speed :frowning: :

Your HD Tune benchmark results is looks really like mine, But the thing is that mine is connected to sata 3 and with AHCI enabled and this is the speed i’m getting ?! 35MB/sec !!! I contacted the cutomer support and they asked me to run those Data Lifeguard Diagnostic tests, so let’s see how this gonna end up…

6

If you are still trying etc

I would say try the Diag tool but DOS version.

Then there is less chance anything will interfere with the test.

good luck

and yeah i understand about ahci and sata 3 sadly i don;t know what you should expect

but i have seen benchmark tests online and the speed between sata 2 and sata 3 is VERY small !

It make very little difference…

7

I finally got the answer!, The thing is that when u copy from a drive to another of the same disk u get half the speed since the the hard is both reading and writing data from and to the same disk. In my benchmark test result average speed was about 97MB/Sec half of that is 48.5MB (you don’t say? :D) and this speed won’t be constant too so i was getting around 35MB - 40MB/Sec which make sense. Moral of the story my hard drive is working properly and to get the full transfer speed of SATA III it will only work when copying from or to another SATA III drive not from or to the same drive.

 

More details and info here.

8

ahh

never thought of that lol

good to know and that you replied back to share your info with us all :slight_smile: