Hi there, this is my first message on this board. I own a WD 640 GB (6400AAKS External) Elements drive which I bought three years ago. It is formatted as NTFS and connected via USB (directly, no hub or extensions) to a Dell notebook with Vista. I haven’t used it for a while, so I wanted to check if it is working fine and erase the disk completely before storing new data on it. I used Data Lifeguard (latest vers. 1.24) just downloaded from the WD site. S.M.A.R.T. data is OK. The drive passed the Quick Read Test, the long Extended Read Test, and the Quick Erase Test, but failed the Full Erase Test. After a couple of hours it gave a Write Zeros Error, continue? I clicked Yes, but after a while another Write Zeros Error came up, so I stopped the test. This is the result: 09-Sector #559401216-559401472::Write Zeros error! What does it mean (bad sectors?) and what am I supposed to do with this drive? Can I still use it or is it faulty?
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I am running the write test again and so far (current sector 590,000,000) no errors! :smileyvery-happy:
Edit: eventually it passed the test!
| Test Option: | WRITE ZEROS |
| Model Number: | WD 6400AAK External |
| Unit Serial Number: | WCASYxxxxxxx |
| Firmware Number: | 1.75 |
| Capacity: | 640.13 GB |
| SMART Status: | PASS |
| Test Result: | COMPLETE |
| Test Time: | 09:15:02, July 20, 2012 |
I suggest you to repeat the Extended Test to compare results.
Yes, actually that’s what I did, and it passed the full erase test again. :catvery-happy:
