You may find it useful to know that I’m still using my trusty WD Red 4 TB (WD40EFRX), five years later, and without errors. So I never needed to replace it with either of the aforementioned WD Black drives.
As I recall the issue, as part of the upgrade process, Windows 10 scanned all my disks and attempted to do an automatic repair on my WD Red without my consent. Even though I had never experienced any problems with it before that. I only saw the glimpse of a timer counting down from 3 seconds, and I was not quick enough to abort it as I was getting back to the computer with coffee in my hand. True story! So I allowed it to finish. After it was completed, I checked my files on this drive and everything was there and was readable. All except a single file, my password database file containing all of my credentials and it was irreplaceable. For reasons unknown to me till this day, it had singled out this one file and corrupted it so I could no longer use it and I had no fresh backup of it. Vicious operating system!
That was a nightmare! This was my very personal and first experience of Windows 10! I finally understood what Microsoft meant by its motto “your files are right where you left them” as part of their Windows 10 release campaign. What a joke!
As I’m reminiscing about this now and reading the Wikipedia article about the CHKDSK tool, this seems awfully familiar to me:
Due to the requirement of the monopolized access to the drive, the CHKDSK cannot check the system disk in the normal system mode. Instead, the system sets a dirty bit to the disk volume and then reboots the computer. During the Windows start-up, a special version of CHKDSK called Autochk (a native mode application) is started by the SMSS.EXE and checks and attempts repairing the file system if the dirty bit is set.
Also…
Criticism has been aimed at the tendency of AUTOCHK to automatically modify the file system when not explicitly solicited by the user who may wish to back up their data in prior, as an attempted repair may scramble, undermine and disown file and directory paths, especially on a multiboot installation where multiple operating systems may have interferingly written to the same partition.
Source: CHKDSK - Wikipedia
Looking back at the WD support case, I find this old log.
Test Option: QUICK TEST
Model Number: WDC WD40EFRX-68WT0N0
Unit Serial Number: WD-REMOVED
Firmware Number: 80.00A80
Capacity: 4000.79 GB
SMART Status: PASS
Test Result: FAIL
Test Error Code: 06-Quick Test on drive 2 did not complete! Status code = 02 (Interrupted by hard or soft reset), Failure Checkpoint = 98 (Unknown Test) SMART self-test did not complete on drive 2!
Test Time: 10:33:18, February 16, 2016
Test Option: QUICK TEST
Model Number: WDC WD40EFRX-68WT0N0
Unit Serial Number: WD-REMOVED
Firmware Number: 80.00A80
Capacity: 4000.79 GB
SMART Status: PASS
Test Result: PASS
Test Time: 10:39:48, February 16, 2016
Test Option: QUICK TEST
Model Number: WDC WD40EFRX-68WT0N0
Unit Serial Number: WD-REMOVED
Firmware Number: 80.00A80
Capacity: 4000.79 GB
SMART Status: PASS
Test Result: PASS
Test Time: 10:44:56, February 16, 2016
Test Option: EXTENDED TEST
Model Number: WDC WD40EFRX-68WT0N0
Unit Serial Number: WD-REMOVED
Firmware Number: 80.00A80
Capacity: 4000.79 GB
SMART Status: PASS
Test Result: ABORT
Test Time: 10:46:52, February 16, 2016
This looks odd! SMART status is “PASS” but the test result is “FAIL”? What does WD mean when it says SMART is PASS? Does it mean SMART is enabled but the quick test is failing? I know I got mixed results running diagnostics and having SMART issues (if issues can be smart). This only started after Windows had its way with the disk and corrupted my password database. The name of the program I used was “WinDlg” (“Data Lifeguard Diagnostic for Windows”), since this is the name of the log file.
I see here that I have a second log from a second computer. Looks like I removed the drive to test it in another computer where I ran both quick test and extended test, both of which passed.
Test Option: QUICK TEST
Model Number: WDC WD40EFRX-68WT0N0
Unit Serial Number: WD-REMOVED
Firmware Number: 80.00A80
Capacity: 4000.79 GB
SMART Status: PASS
Test Result: PASS
Test Time: 15:42:44, February 18, 2016
Test Option: EXTENDED TEST
Model Number: WDC WD40EFRX-68WT0N0
Unit Serial Number: WD-REMOVED
Firmware Number: 80.00A80
Capacity: 4000.79 GB
SMART Status: PASS
Test Result: PASS
Test Time: 01:00:22, February 19, 2016
The only drive that was failing in that computer was an old Seagate drive. This Seagate drive might have somehow triggered a set of events that caused Windows 10 and the WD drive to behave like this (speculation). Before I moved it back to the original computer, I did a clean installation of Windows 10 (because I could not trust the one I had upgraded to from Windows 8.1), I reflashed the BIOS and removed the old Seagate drive. This WD Red drive has worked well ever since and it has seen one system hardware change. I don’t recall what it’s called, but I know it uses a reliable magnetic technology and for this reason they are still sought after among PC enthusiasts like myself (I think it’s called CMR).
As for the passwords, I recovered like 95% of it, I don’t remember now but I know I did the math, recovery was over 90%. But it took me a week or two to put the puzzle together using raw data I salvaged from the disk. (I’m still using Windows 10 and will not upgrade to Windows 11 in years to come.)
But I would expect an answer within 48 hours from any big tech company. I will wait some more… I’m used to it now.