Odd Errors on New WD Black 1TB Drive

Justed got a new WD Black 1TB and after running Short+Extended tests, I found these errors. Would greatly appreciate it if anyone could provide more information or insight on these errors. It was four of the following errors:

Error 1 occurred at disk power-on lifetime: 3 hours (0 days + 3 hours)
  When the command that caused the error occurred, the device was active or idle.

  After command completion occurred, registers were:
  ER ST SC SN CL CH DH
  – – – – – – –
  04 51 01 30 4f c2 a0  Error: ABRT

  Commands leading to the command that caused the error were:
  CR FR SC SN CL CH DH DC   Powered_Up_Time  Command/Feature_Name
  – – – – – – – –  ----------------  --------------------
  b0 d6 01 be 4f c2 a0 02      00:02:29.128  SMART WRITE LOG
  b0 da 01 00 4f c2 a0 02      00:02:29.050  SMART RETURN STATUS
  80 44 00 00 44 57 a0 02      00:02:29.049  [VENDOR SPECIFIC]
  b0 d6 01 be 4f c2 a0 02      00:02:29.028  SMART WRITE LOG
  80 45 00 01 44 57 a0 02      00:02:29.028  [VENDOR SPECIFIC]

Everything else appears to be normal, including SMART values. Googling bits of the above didn’t reveal much info. The drive has been powered up 3 times so far. First time was normal. Second time it was only partially recognized and I was going to RMA it (couldn’t read/write to it, Windows didn’t detect it and Linux saw it but couldn’t do anything with it). When I tested a third time, everything checked out and that’s when I found the above errors.

Any information on the error would be most welcomed. Thanks.

(Edited for formating, Somehow the first post was munched up. My apologies.)

That is a beautiful block of text, so basically what is your problem?

My apologies for the wall of text. Hopefully I cleaned it up so it more clear now. Basically, @3 hours my new WB Black 1TB reported several cryptic errors relating to SMART (as far as I can tell). I’ve ran a bad block scan in Windows and Linux and so far everything seems okay. But I’m approaching my 30 days to exchange and would greatly appreciate some insight into the errors my drive reported to see if I should RMA etc. Thanks :slight_smile:

What does a SMART test say?

All the SMART values are Good/Healthy. All the raw values are high, everything looks good there. Running the Short Test, Conveyance Test, and Extended Test all came back with a PASS. Ran a badblock scan and found zero bad blocks. No loud or unusual sounds from the drive. Only thing wrong is that cryptic error I posted in my first post which occurred four times @ 3 hours in.

The short answer is that the drive responded with an Abort status after it was unable to execute a particular Vendor Specific Command (VSC). AFAICT, there is nothing wrong.

The following resource explains the VSCs that are sent to the drive by WD’s WDIDLE3 utility:

idle3-tools:
http://idle3-tools.sourceforge.net/

WDIDLE3 and IDLE3CTL both use WD’s proprietary ATA commands to read and set the IDLE3 timer.

The following document covers the standard ATA command set:

Working Draft AT Attachment 8 - ATA/ATAPI Command Set (ATA8-ACS):
http://www.t13.org/documents/UploadedDocuments/docs2008/D1699r6a-ATA8-ACS.pdf

Section 7.53.9 defines the standard SMART WRITE LOG (B0h/D6h) command. Furthermore, appendix A.6 states that Log Addresses A0h-DFh are Vendor Specific Logs. That is, each HDD manufacturer can use them for their own proprietary purpose.

In WD’s case, VSCs are used for special purposes such as setting the IDLE3 timer, reading and writing firmware modules, setting the SATA link speed, reading and writing the defect lists, etc. The VSC is actually disguised as a data packet, and this packet is transferred to or from the drive via SMART Read or Write Log commands. WD’s drives are able to interpret the log data but other vendors’ drives cannot.

However, as an added precaution, WD’s drives expect to see a VSC Enable command (Command/Feature Registers = CR/FR = 0x80/0x45) prior to the SMART Write Log (0xB0/0xD6) command. Afterwards, the host is expected to issue a VSC Disable (0x80/0x44).

The smartctl log shows the following command sequence:

VSC Enable
SMART WRITE LOG (log #BE)
VSC Disable
SMART RETURN STATUS
SMART WRITE LOG (log #BE)

AFAICT, you appear to have used a WD utility which performed some proprietary function on the drive. However, in doing so, this utility failed to precede the last SMART WRITE LOG command with the required VSC Enable command. The drive responded correctly by aborting the command.

BTW, the VSC Enable/Disable commands both have “57 44” in the CH/CL registers. These hexadecimal values correspond to “WD” in ASCII.

80 45 00 01 44 57 a0 02
80 44 00 00 44 57 a0 02

Thanks fzabkar! That’s exactly what I was looking for. So that error seems pretty benign. Any idea what might cause a drive to not show up, all of a sudden, then reappear a few restarts later? Right after I got this error, I rebooted and the drive disappeared from Windows, then I checked with Linux and Linux saw a drive but couldn’t mount or identify it. Moved it to another PC and it recognized it so I moved it back to the orginal PC and it was fine (so far).

Sorry, I don’t have any ideas. You have already run SMART diagnostics and self tests. Other than that I don’t know what else to try.