View Full Version : 1TB Western Digital Green Hard Drive failure
I just want to let the people know that I bought 2 retail boxed 1TB green drives back in November and 1 has failed. The build date is October 22, 2008. The drive is of the 3 platter 16mb cache WD10EACS variety.
This one was giving me some windows problems, reboots, loss of recognition, LONG booting (like an hour of that blue windows bar moving). I reformatted the system, and problems were still there, so I changed a power supply around, then the hard drives, which were the only two things I've touched lately that could screw the system up, besides old age. I figured the precise drive that I had problems with, and tried externally connecting it, connecting to different controllers, and even a different computer, but always with difficulty. I was sort of able to do a 100% format that failed a couple times, and well... it never worked right and would get derecognized soon after. The thing then seemed to power down post power up after quietly trying to grind away, sort of a clicking pattern, but far from a clicking sound. I'm now setup for an rma, my first Western Digital one ever.
Any other bad luck with these? Green or otherwise?
I've been using WD's for a long time and have had good luck with them. Haven't tried the Green ones yet though.
foolkiller
11 Feb 2009, 11:17pm
This type of situation is what warranty is designed for. Drives can and will fail, even new.
Although your description doesn't really give enough information, I'd say that drive was bad right from factory, which can happen from time to time. I bought a few Seagates a few months back and one of them had this exact same problem.
Zuntar
12 Feb 2009, 8:58pm
I have two of them running in RAID 1 for my Windows Home server, no problems yet. lets see....I got them 4+ months ago.
radzer0
6 Mar 2009, 9:48pm
I just want to let the people know that I bought 2 retail boxed 1TB green drives back in November and 1 has failed. The build date is October 22, 2008. The drive is of the 3 platter 16mb cache WD10EACS variety.
This one was giving me some windows problems, reboots, loss of recognition, LONG booting (like an hour of that blue windows bar moving). I reformatted the system, and problems were still there, so I changed a power supply around, then the hard drives, which were the only two things I've touched lately that could screw the system up, besides old age. I figured the precise drive that I had problems with, and tried externally connecting it, connecting to different controllers, and even a different computer, but always with difficulty. I was sort of able to do a 100% format that failed a couple times, and well... it never worked right and would get derecognized soon after. The thing then seemed to power down post power up after quietly trying to grind away, sort of a clicking pattern, but far from a clicking sound. I'm now setup for an rma, my first Western Digital one ever.
Any other bad luck with these? Green or otherwise?
How about this one, i have a media box that i originaly built because i had some spare money. Put in 2 greenpower drives. Within a month one died. Fixed it, 2 weeks later. Another died, since than im at replacement #7. I get from a local dealer who swaps them for me in house for brand new.
As we speak. The raid utility is rebuilding because of a crc error. Hopefully its just a error and not a crapped out drive. But i did move the machine a few feet to hookup a new keyboard right before it started giving problems.
I signed up here just to post about these drives and how bad they suck. Id add the extra money and get a black edition for anybody who wants to get a good drive. DONT get the GP series.
On a side note for those wondering. I have 2 of them. Originaly ran in raid 0. After 2 drives died i switched to raid 1. The 5 that died are 3 platter models. The one that is showing with errors is also a 3 platter edition. The other one currently in use is a 2 platter. Maybe it is better than the 3's who knows.
radzer0
7 Mar 2009, 6:51pm
*update*
i came in today and my 2nd drive is giving errors now. i got untill monday before i can get another drive to rebuild the raid so hopefully this one dont die. raid 1 on these drives and it dont even stay working right
foolkiller
7 Mar 2009, 8:44pm
Read the batch numbers off the drive. Make sure you aren't getting drives from the same batch. I have seen a few cases where an entire run of drives comes out of a manufacturer with a higher than normal failure rate due to defects for that product run.
radzer0
7 Mar 2009, 8:50pm
Manf dates have run from jan of this year to the latest 2 are oct and may of 08
The dealer i get them from sometimes has the latest date code and sometimes there around 6 months old. WDC starts the warranty when they ship to me tho.
radzer0
7 Mar 2009, 8:54pm
ALso note im not bashing WDC as a whole. Just the greenpower drives. Ive sold prolly around 1500 drives over the last 3 years and maybe have a 5% return rate.. Which is understandable being more than half go in laptops and laptops take abuse.
I can't help but think if you've gone through 7 drivers, it's not the drives....
That's my opinion as well. The odds of seven sequential drive failures is astronomical. You should probably buy a lottery ticket.
radzer0
9 Mar 2009, 5:19pm
That's my opinion as well. The odds of seven sequential drive failures is astronomical. You should probably buy a lottery ticket.
Yea but i got a WD Black in my laptop, no problems. I got 5 of those seagate 1.5tb problem drives in the machine im on at the moment. No problems like others seem to get when running raid 5.
From personal experience I can only say that when 1 drive fails, it could be the drive. When two drives fail....it *could* be the drive. When 7 drivers fail, it's likely the controller. This is exaggerated even more if the drives are running in a raid. When the drives failed did you do any tests on them outside of the raid? Like a simple low level format followed by a complete physical sector scan to see if the drive actually is physically damaged or if it was just a drive integrity error being detected by the raid?
The reason I'm curious is because I've been searching the net for other people complaining about WD Green drives and I can't really turn up much. Which in and of itself doesn't mean anything. However if you've had 7 back-to-back failures I would think search on the net would find some more rumbling.
radzer0
9 Mar 2009, 6:46pm
From personal experience I can only say that when 1 drive fails, it could be the drive. When two drives fail....it *could* be the drive. When 7 drivers fail, it's likely the controller. This is exaggerated even more if the drives are running in a raid. When the drives failed did you do any tests on them outside of the raid? Like a simple low level format followed by a complete physical sector scan to see if the drive actually is physically damaged or if it was just a drive integrity error being detected by the raid?
The reason I'm curious is because I've been searching the net for other people complaining about WD Green drives and I can't really turn up much. Which in and of itself doesn't mean anything. However if you've had 7 back-to-back failures I would think search on the net would find some more rumbling.
The WD diagnostic program for windows ive ran it on the drives thru a usb adapter. Some it says it will fix the bad sectors which i dont want that in a system used to backup other failing hard drives. Some it flat out comes up smart failed.
Running thru a USB adapter would get rid of any problems the controller would cause.
Yep, testing them in an external enclosure would rule out any controller errors. Guess it's time you buy that lottery ticket :)
radzer0
9 Mar 2009, 8:41pm
Was at the casino the other nite. No luck.
Zuntar
13 Mar 2009, 2:52pm
You,ve got to have bigger issues. IMHO
henrik_z
21 Mar 2009, 5:42am
The WD diagnostic program for windows ive ran it on the drives thru a usb adapter. Some it says it will fix the bad sectors which i dont want that in a system used to backup other failing hard drives. Some it flat out comes up smart failed.
Running thru a USB adapter would get rid of any problems the controller would cause.
Have you considered that your issue might be vibration?
I've just had three "problematic" EACS 1TB drives in a server.
Statistically, as people have mentioned, once you get to this number it's unlikely that it's the drives. Eventually I narrowed the problem down to a dodgy bearing in the fan in front of the drive cage (grinding/screaming.. hard to tell on the outset because it was in a datacentre) - swapped the fan out and the poor write performance and instability issues largely vanished.
I was getting 25MB/sec read, and < 1MB/sec write. When used outside the case on their own the drives work at 60-70MB/sec in both directions. Also was getting "ghost" bad sectors detected during reads (ie non-reproducible errors), high SMART read error rates etc, and one of the drives was periodically not being detected on boot.
Luckily I'd seen this video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDacjrSCeq4) a few weeks previous and that made me think of the possibility of noise/vibration being the problem.
Gargoyle
21 Mar 2009, 1:54pm
Have you considered that your issue might be vibration?
...
Luckily I'd seen this video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDacjrSCeq4) a few weeks previous and that made me think of the possibility of noise/vibration being the problem.
That's fascinating. I had no idea it could have such a dramatic effect.
Welcome to Icrontic, BTW!
Zuntar
28 Mar 2009, 1:28pm
That's fascinating. I had no idea it could have such a dramatic effect.
Welcome to Icrontic, BTW!
Ditto here!!!:thumbup
Mr TRiot
30 Mar 2009, 12:33am
I think the mistake you made is getting a green power hard drive to begin with....The amount of power used is pretty minuscule.
*doesn't think "being green" is cool*
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