I ordered a pair of WD10EALS drives from the Egg and decided to test them using WDs Data Lifeguard diagnostics for Windows before putting them into use. I checked smart values first, and them proceeded to write zeros to each drive for 2 or 3 rounds. Lastly I ran the full test. One drive was flagged by smart as failing. The second drive got two more treatments, and even though it was never flagged by smart as a failed drive, it was eventually unable to complete the Lifeguard quick or long tests - would just return some unable to complete test due to unknown test element X. The WD KB said I should RMA because of the unknown test element failure, so I RAMd both drives back the Newegg.
The replacement pair has the same kinds of problems after the same type of testing.
Am I doing something stupid here? I haven’t used anything on these drives except the Lifeguard software, other than read raw smart values using Victoria. I think the odds of me getting 4 bad drives in a row is really low, but I think it’s even more unlikely that I’ve damaged these drives using WDs own software. I guess I am asking for a reality check before I RMA this pair as well.
I tested the first two drives on two different machines using the Windows version of Lifeguard under both Windows 7 x64 and Windows Server 2008 x64, and I’ve tested the new drives on the Windows 7 machine and a third machine using the DOS CD version of lifeguard.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.