Self Test failed - What's the appropriate action?

Hello fellow MBL users, I have recently installed the latest Firmware update (MyBookLive 02.10.09-124 : Core F/W) and after that had noticed continuous read/write action on the disk for days, until (following advice in this Forum) I finally turned off all remote access, iTunes and Twonky server, etc., and thereby got the contiuous read/write action to stop as well as the sleep mode functioning again. However, I ran a (short) Self Test after having resolved this issue and got the message from the system “Self Test failed”, w/o any further information. So I ran “smartctl -A /dev/sda” (as suggested in one of the postings on this Forum) as well as a full system report from the dashboard and both identified issues with sectors (“Offline_Uncorrectable”, “Multi_Zone_Error_Rate” and “Current_Pending_Sector”). For your information, I had previously (prior to the Firmware update) run the (short) Self Test a few times alreadyand the system had never once reported a failed test. In light of this error report I am rather concerned about the safety of the data on the drive, and have therefore filed a report with WD customer service through the dashboard a week ago. However, so far I have not received any response yet (other then the acknowledgment of my submission), which is extremely disappointing. Since I’m rather concerned about the data on the drive (50% full), I’m now looking for some advice from the Community. Does anyone of you have any experience with this kind of error message? Did you end up having to replace/reformat/etc. the drive? I’d really appreciate any suggestion on how to proceed. Thanks & best regards, Thomas.

seems this would be a case where WD should do an advance RMA, where they ship you a new drive, you use safe point to copy your data over, and then you send back the bad drive in that same box.  that would be the ideal way for them to handle it.

As far as I know they don’t do advanced RMAs.  I think you can safe point backup to another drive on the network, like a USB drive that you’re sharing? 

thanks a lot for the feeback! From your comment I take it that you do consider the drive to actually need replacing, so I better start looking for another drive big enough to transfer the data to.

cman548 wrote:

seems this would be a case where WD should do an advance RMA, where they ship you a new drive, you use safe point to copy your data over, and then you send back the bad drive in that same box.  that would be the ideal way for them to handle it.

 

As far as I know they don’t do advanced RMAs.  I think you can safe point backup to another drive on the network, like a USB drive that you’re sharing? 

Wait are you saying that WD Does not do advance RMA? After reading this I went to WD Website and look at this:

Advance RMA:

We ship the replacement product to you first before receiving your defective product. You have 30 days to send us your defective product. A valid credit card is required to insure that WD receives the returned product within 30 days from the date on which the replacement product is shipped. Please see below for more details about the service:

  • U.S., Canadian, and European Union customers only

I was just going off what I read from people on this board, and I don’t recall anyone saying they received a replacement before sending in the problem drive. 

If they do, that’d be the route to go.  If it’s still functioning you can at least get your data off of it before you send it back to them

Yes they can do, but you give them your credit card number. WD send a drive and you have, I think, 30 days to return your faulty drive. If you do your card does not get charged.

I’m actually aware of that, but it’s unfortunately restricted to US, Canadian and EU customers, as far as I understand, and I currently live in Asia. So far still no response from WD whatsoever. This is really becoming very frustrating! Has anyone ever had such an error message and been able to fix it by restoring the unit to factory default and/or reformating it?

SMARTCTL interrogates the drive’s own diagnostics. If the S.M.A.R.T. diagnostics is showing an error then the drive itself is poorly. It can compensate for a while but then the drive WILL fail.  It’s a warranty R.M.A.

thanks for making this very clear. That’s the kind of comment/advise I was looking for.

The drive’s own diagnostics is uaually a life saver. It can detect problems before the drive dies and if correctly used and monitored gives a chance to back-up a drive which is about to fail.

indeed very use-/helpful. Might be worth considering running these kind of tests on a more regular basis …

The RMA process is SOOOO simple. I had been having intermittent access issues with the drive. Short diag passed. Log diag would never get past 10%. I contacted support and they suggested moving the data off the drive and restoring to factory settings. I went back and forth a bit with them about it, because I don’t have anything large enough to move the data to. They never suggested an RMA despite the failed diags (the log shows errors). For each of the past few mornings the drive has been unresponsive (no UI, no SSH access). It needed a power cycle to work again.

To shorten an already too long story…I found the “RMA Product” link on the “check warranty page” that came up after I used the UI to Request Support. I could choose either “advanced RMA” where WD would send me a drive ahead of time (with credit card to back it up) or “standard RMA” where I would return first. I do have to pay shipping ($7) to return my drive, but a replacement will be at my house within 5 business days. I hope the drive lives until then. But it was a very easy process.

Ron <><