Three of four new WD Elements 2TB fail WD diagnostic tool

Hi there,

To be more specific about what I wrote in the subject line: I first bought two external hard drives as I needed them. I ran the diagnostic tool (I always do that before I start using the drives), I ran the extended test, and on one of the two hard drives I got the information: “Test found sectors that may be repairable.”

I have bought and tested approximately 40 hard drives the last five years, and only once have I had a new hard drive to fail the extended test. It got this “Test found sectors that may be repairable” message, and I did try the repair option and apparently the hard drive was fixed. But within a months the hard drive had failed completely.

So I didn’t like that message, and didn’t prompt a repair, but instead asked the online shop to get it delivered back again. However, when requesting the online shop to send back a merchandise that a customer claims to be defect, the policy of the company is that if they check a product and they find it to pass, they will charge a fee for $50-$100. (I live in Scandinavia, everything is expensive here.)

I wondered whether the support on that netshop would mean that it is acceptible with a few bad sectors on a hard drive, use the simple repair option, send the hard drive back to me and charge me a high fee, for a hard drive which I personally mean is has a weakness?

Anyway witha bit of anxiety I still sent it back.

But since I really needed one more hard drive, I placed another order on the same online shop. I actually bought two hard drives, just in case one of the two would show the same flaw when running the extended diagnosis.

To my surprise both hard drives had errors. The first one that I tested came out with the same message as described above (Test found sectors that may be repairable"), whereas the other hard drive came out even worse: " Too many bad sectors detected." The diagnosis program stopped in the middle of the scan.

Also worth noticing: On 2TB hard drives that have passed the test brilliantly, the scan has always taken 16 hours. But with the two that had the bad sectors (but that could be repairable), the tests took over 20 hours.
And with the last - and more defect - hard drive the test scan was also originally showing that it was about to take more than 20 hours to finish.

So to my question number one: Are we supposed to accept new hard drives that show some “bad sectors that may be repairable”? (I really don’t like that and will then instead definitely use the warranty where I am allowed to send back what I purchased within 14 days, if paying the postage myself.)

So do I have the right to get  a new hard drive without having to use the warranty where I have to pay for the postage, but instead let the online shop cover the postage and let the service check the product for the same error?

That last hard drive that had too many bad sectors I mean is beyond question.

My question number two: Thee out of four hard drives that fail the extended diagnosis test. May it be that the whole party of a production has the same weakness?

Thank you for your input. :smiley:

New drives should be error free.

Data LifeGuard doesn’t show the raw error counts. Instead try a comprehensive SMART diagnostic. Look for reallocated, pending, or uncorrectable sectors.

HD Sentinel (DOS / Windows / Linux):
http://www.hdsentinel.com/

HDDScan for Windows:
http://hddscan.com/

See this article for SMART info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.M.A.R.T.

2 Likes

Thank you for your answer fzabkar; also some nice links that you provided. It is much appreciated :smiley:

“GWscan” can do a comprehensive test, but the drive cannot be on a USB bus, it has to be on your main IDE/SATA bus. Can you connect your drive to one? I think these drives are USB only, although I’ve seen them with SATA ports. Connect to a Sata port, make a GWscan boot disk, unplug all drives save your Elements drive, and boot from the GWscan disk. Run a SMART test, then a short test, then a full test in that order. Depending on your System and Speed, and Ram, it will take from 25 minutes to an hour and a half. On older machines, about 3 hours. But GWscan (it is also built in to the DOS version of Data Lifeguard Tools) is just about the best Drive tool I’ve used, it can repair many incipient errors.

The WD version of DLG MAY be able to see the USB drive. Don’t know - I haven’t tried it like that yet.

Both of you provided good tips on programs to diagnose hard drives.

But I am not sure how to interpret it; shall I interpret it that you mean that WD’s diagnose tool is not to be trusted when in fact it tells that it finds errors?

Remember, I am asking about total new hard drives, and I want to make sure that there are in fact true errors on them before sending them back to the netshop.

Both of you thank you for great tips on programs though!

No, not at all, WD DLG is a great tool - But the new tool for checking drives in a DOS environment, which is the one I use, is now based on GWscan. GWscan was a tool made for Gateway Puters. It works on just about all makes of drives. WD DLG for Dos uses the same interface. By all means use it.

  1. Connect your My Book.Passport.

  2. create a bootup disck, on a flash drive, or on a CD, or use Hiren’s Boot CD which has GW scan already installed. You can get Hiren’s Boot CD as an ISO disk image but you have to use a torrent site. These are not cracked programs though, they are all shareware version of all the programs. it’s just the only place where you can get them. and you can burn it with IMGBURN, a free burning tool.

  3. IN Dos, type GWSAN. Or, in Hiren’s Boot CD, pull up DOS TOOLS and go to HARD DRIVE TOOLS. It’s all a DOS Menu.

  4. Make sure you can see your drive. That was the problem with GWSCAN, you cannot scan a drive mounted on USB.

The WD DLG for Dos MAY see the USB drive. Im just not sure.

HD Sentinel and HDDScan can both test the drive via USB, if its enclosure uses one of the supported USB-SATA bridge chips.

Both tools will display the raw SMART data which gives a more detailed picture of the drive’s health. Data LifeGuard’s SMART report is merely pass-or-fail.

Good, that’s good to know, I’ve never used those so I’ll make a note of them. Thanks!

The reason I liked GW scan was that I was able to fix about 20 drives that said “Read Element Failure Immenemt” - After running GWscan, they came up as totally good drives, some of them are still running on my systems.

NorseGuy wrote:

 

“But I am not sure how to interpret it; shall I interpret it that you mean that WD’s diagnose tool is not to be trusted when in fact it tells that it finds errors?”

 

Not always. I’ve experienced it reported a drive had bad sectors, while it actually was a bad SATA cable that was the problem. Not good if you return the drive to WD. So check your cables etc. before returning a drive.