WD3000HLFS RAID Failures

WD Internal Drives Desktop & Mobile Drives
1

Over the last month I’ve built 3 RAID 6 systems with 8 WD3000HLFS drives in each. The drives were purchased in 3 batches. The first two systems are running just fine, today I started initializing the 3rd system and almost immediately I had 5 drives fail. Using the 3 remaining drives as a test I’ve managed to initialize and drop 2 smaller RAID sets so it seems the 3 remaining drives are fine. 

I’ve never had this many drives fail new out of the bag so I assumed immediately it was a controller issue however the fact that the 3 drives are working leads me to doubt that hypothisis. Also the enclosure they are in has been working fine for over a year with a similarly size 8 drive array using the 150GB models of these drives so I doubt it’s power or cabling since none of that changed from this morning on the old array to now.

In comparing the failed drives (and 3 working) to the other drives in the other systems I did notice a difference. The system with the problem all have WD3000HLFS-01G6U4 part numbers on firmware 4.04V06 while the other systems all have WD3000HLFS-01MZUV0 part numbers on firmware 4.05G04 

I realize this is a long shot asking this but is there a known problem with that earlier firmware and or part number? I haven’t pulled any of the indivdual drives yet to try and test them but the coicidence of all being in the same earlier batch seems like a kind of smoking gun to me.

Thanks,

John

2

Hi there, if I were you I’d contact WD on this one…

3

There’s a couple of things you should do:

1)  Check our compatibility list for this drive to make sure your hardware is on it:  http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/library/cs/2579-701322.pdf

  1. Check with your raid controller manufacturer and see if they’ve had any issues with this configuration.

Also, you may want to know that even though we do extensive testing on these drives with a great combination of systems, it is possible that the RAID controller just isn’t responding to the difference in the drives: the WD3000HLFS-01G6U4 verses the WD3000HLFS-01MZUV0.  Usually, when setting up RAID arrays, it is preferable to have all the same exact type of drives.