WD RED 5TB Tests failed, than passed

Internal Drives WD Green
1

Hi everyone.

Sorry to bother if this topic has been already discussed, but I am pretty confused if I should RMA or not my drive after some weird test results.

In details, my NAS reported one of my 5 TB drive as “Abnormal” with a media error on one sector, after roughly 650 hours of use (I actually have five WD red 3tb, three WD Red 5tb, two WD Green 3tb and one WD Green 4tb… this is the first one to fail so quickly…), so, after backing up all the data, I unplugged the hdd from the NAS and plugged it in my pc (I have a case called “Lan Box” with so called x-dock bays for quick plugging and unplugging, just like a NAS) and run some tests with WD Data Lifeguard Diagnostic:

1st Quick Test : Failed, Status Code 6
2nd Quick Test: Failed, Status Code 7
1st Extended Test: Failed, after few seconds, Too Many Bad Sectors

But here is the weird part, for curiosity, I have run a Quick Test again
3rd Quick Test: Pass :flushed:
so I’ve run an Extended Test again
2nd Extended Test: conclused with a warning, Found Bad Sectors that may be repairable

So, planning to send it to RMA eventually, I wiped all the data with a full zeros writing, conclused without any problem, than, again I’ve run some tests and:
4th Quick Test: Pass
3rd Extended Test: Pass

Even Crystal Info shows the drive as “good” now.

What I am supposed to do now? Send the disk to RMA?
But why should they change the drive if it passes the tests?

As I’ve alredy told, I am pretty confused… :grin:

Thanks in advance

2

Hello, when you wrote zeroes to the drive it force the unit to reallocate the bad sectors and this is the reason why is showing as good, if you are not using the drive for anything mission critical and you don’t want any downtime you can keep on using it, however I would recommend you to get it replace before the warranty end.

3

Thanks for the answer. :slight_smile:

I guessed it was for that, but my point is, would the RMA department replace it?

As the tests are ok now…

I was almost thinking to wait some time to see if it fails definitely (as the warranty ends at 31/12/2018)
I’ve already replaced it… My data are safe now… this would be a spare/emergency disk now…

4

The RMA department would replace it, as long as is within warranty.