I replaced a dead Segate drive in my iMac with the WD2001FASS about a year ago. It has since ‘failed’ as well.
I’m curious if the SMART Status is available for folks using this drive. It seems there are sectors in the boot area that have issues and this is why my drive is not working / untrustworthy.
The failure was that the system would not boot (Mac OS X Snow Leopard.) I was able to boot into single user mode and navigate the drive however. Removing the drive and placing in an external case USB case allowed me to plug it into another mac. The Mac did not recognize the drive and asked me to “Ignore, Iniitalize or Retry”. I was able to get data off the drive using Prosoft Engineering’s Drive Genius 3. Drive Genius indicated that there were numerous slow reads during the process and that I should only removed critical data as the drive may fail trying to remove it all. I was able to get all my data, and then run a drive erase. Once erased, the mac now recognizes the drive.
I now have the drive hooked up to a PC and using WD’s test tool, DLGDIAG. The SMART Status is “Not Available”. The quick test passes. When I start the extended test I get some very loud drive sounds for eight seconds before getting normal drive spin sounds. The test is in progress - only another 18 hours to go.
Anyone have similar issues? I hae two other FASS drives.
Thx
