I have WDC WD30PURZ-85GU6Y0 for about a year. This kind of pattern shows-off for the second time on the same HDD
Once before (that was few months ago) I defragment it, but today when I was checked again, I saw almost the same cluster pattern.
Does anyone know what could be the cause?
never seen anything like that
May I ask, (I know this thread is old but I’m having the same issue on HGST HDD) what grogram is that you’re using to view the Custer map?
I have some ideas, but no solid facts:
I suspect this is a normal function of WD Purple drives-
I am replacing a WD AV-GP drive in a camera surveillance system.
In doing my research, I found some descriptions of wear abatement strategies in WD drives designed for video.
The Purple Surveillance appear to be the successor of the WD AV-GP series, optimized for 24/7 video streaming.
I could not find anything specific to your model yet, but the older AV-GP documentation includes this description:
“Preemptive Wear Leveling
(PWL)
The drive arm frequently sweeps
across the disk to reduce uneven
wear on the drive surface common
to audio video streaming
applications.”
I suspect the newer series also have some sort of similar operation, even though the brief descriptions on the WD documents don’t detail them.
I do not know, but I suspect it also ‘rotates’ the areas of the disk that it records on, to achieve the MTBF lifetimes these 24/7 drives have.
I would be reluctant to defrag a Purple drive without further researching this, OR, contacting WD support.
This pattern MAY be the drives intelligent wear reducing strategy to spread the data to new areas of the drive surface.
Unfortunately, I do not have the time to try to find the stuff I read last month, or find better answers for you, but I wanted to share this theory with you.
If I were you, I would not defrag it anymore, until you find out if this is an intentional pattern, but just my theory.
Good luck,
If others know if this is true, please share it here!
Mr K L
[FYI: my original drive WD10EURX-63FH1Y0, checking if WDBGKN0010HNC-NRSN compatible, for Samsung SDR-5100N security camera system]
