Clarification regarding S.M.A.R.T. attributes for latest WD My Passport & Elements series

WD External Drives WD Portable Drives
1

I have seen that latest WD My Passport 4TB model only display 4 S.M.A.R.T. attributes & does not show “power on hours” value.For reference see below:

My question is,is this behaviour unique to My Passport 4TB models or the other capacity My Passport models & latest Elements series models show the same behaviour too.If yes then what is the reason behind such a move because it only restricts the information available to a customer to make informed choices about their data safety.In fact I am avoiding purchasing any WD 2.5" portable drives as of now solely for this reason as I have relied on various SMART values in past to make decisions about backing up/purchasing HDDs

2

Hello wtar788,

The post you have referred to, It seems the user have run the SMART status using Crystal Disk and posted the results.

Please run SMART report using WD Data Lifeguard Diagnostics software and let us know if same thing happens:

3

See the attached image,even WD’s own tool only show 4 SMART attributes:

4

I just found out that these SMART attributes are actually marked as hidden in WD portable drive firmware & that is why they are not being shown in any 3rd part SMART tool or even WD’s own disk monitoring tool.This is quite disappointing that WD has chosen to hide these SMART attributes in drive’s firmware making it seems like WD has something to hide regarding these latest portable drive models.

wd_smart 21.rpm

ROYL header found

ID Flg Cur Wor Thr Raw Description

1 2F 100 253 51 00000000000000 Raw Read Error Rate
2 *A4 100 253 0 00000000000000 Throughput Performance
3 27 253 253 21 00000000001345 Spin Up Time
4 *B2 100 100 0 00000000000013 Start/Stop Count
5 33 200 200 140 00000000000000 Re-allocated Sector Count
7 *AE 100 253 0 00000000000000 Seek Error Rate
8 *A4 100 253 0 00000000000000 Seek Time Performance
9 *B2 100 100 0 00000000000000 Power-On Hours Count
10 *B2 100 253 0 00000000000000 Spin Retry Count
11 *B2 100 253 0 00000000000000 Drive Calibration Retry Count
12 *B2 100 100 0 00000000000013 Drive Power Cycle Count
16 *A2 100 253 0 00000000000000 Unknown Attribute
180 *AF 100 253 100 00000000000000 Unknown Attribute
183 *B2 100 100 0 00000000000000 SATA Downshift Error Count
184 *B2 100 100 0 00000000000000 End to End Error Det/Corr Count
187 *B2 100 100 0 00000000000000 Reported Uncorrectable Errors
188 *B2 100 100 0 00000000000000 Command Time Out
189 *BA 100 253 0 00000000000000 High Fly Writes
190 *A2 71 70 0 0000000000001D Airflow Temperature
191 *B2 100 100 0 00000000000000 Shock Sense
192 *B2 200 200 0 0000000000000F Emergency Retract Cycle Count
193 *B2 200 200 0 00000000000003 Load/Unload Cycle Count
194 22 123 122 0 0000000000001D HDA Temperature
195 *B6 100 253 0 00000000000000 ECC on the Fly Count
196 *B2 200 200 0 00000000000000 Re-allocated Sector Event
197 *B2 200 200 0 00000000000000 Current Pending Sector Count
198 *B0 100 253 0 00000000000000 Offline Uncorrectable Sector Count
199 *B2 200 200 0 00000000000000 UltraDMA CRC Error Rate
200 *88 100 253 0 00000000000000 Multi Zone Error Rate
240 *B2 100 100 0 00000000000000 Head Flying Hours
241 *B2 200 200 0 000000000A3A2A Total LBAs written
242 *B2 200 200 0 000000000B92D2 Total LBAs read
243 *B2 100 253 0 00000000000000 Unknown Attribute
253 *B2 100 253 0 00000000000000 Unknown Attribute
254 *B2 100 253 0 00000000000000 Free Fall Sensor

 * = hidden attribute
5

Hi wtar788 ,

It seems that the drive has bad sectors. So you can probably replace the drive after backup all the data from it.

Thanks!

6

This is not my drive,it is a test unit of a friend for running various tools/tests on WD drive without worrying about data loss.

I want to know why WD has marked these attributes as hidden in firmware.It doesn’t give a good impression about WD latest portable drive models.