Question 10TB HGST SMART warning - bad drive or power issue?

[Shmee]

Hello, I recently received a refurb 10TB HGST data center drive, from Amazon/GoHDD. I was testing it earlier, by plugging it in to USB 3.1 dock, which is 12V DC powered by AC adapter. Good news, the drive shows up in storage management/device manger, and it spins up. Bad news, it fails to initialize GPT. I checked the SMART data, and it has a warning status. From what I can tell, a bunch of bad sectors, specifically Uncorrected Sector Count, IIRC.

Basically, I would just like to get a second opinion on this drive. It seems to me that it is not healthy, with the bad sectors, and that explains it not initializing. So this is return / warranty time. I just wanted to be sure I am not missing something. I don't think the adapter could be the issue, as the drive does seem to spin up, is detected, and I can read its SMART data. But I wanted to be sure, as I know these drives come with the special power off feature, and sometimes do not work properly with some desktop PSUs, what with the drives being designed for datacenter. Thoughts?

 

[mikeymikec]

Disclaimer: I don't know anything about enterprise drives.

Post the SMART stats? Though if the drive is in warranty and SMART stats say nope, chances are this is a simple warranty issue.

 

[igor_kavinski]

I was testing it earlier, by plugging it in to USB 3.1 dock

Plug it directly into a SATA port to be sure.

 

[manly]

Doesn't sound like anything to do with power disable, but you can block off PIN 3 with kapton or electrical tape. All reports are that goHardDrive is very amenable to an RMA. I guess you do have to pay 1-way shipping.

You could try some Linux-fu as well (sgdisk -Z), but as always, be careful.

 

[Shmee]

Here is the SMART screenshot for the drive.

 

[manly]

I would tell goHardDrive that there are a high number of errors in the SMART data, and that you would like them to provide a call tag for RMA.

It looks like the raw count is 30, which isn't a small number. We have no way of knowing what the progression is (i.e. you might be okay if it's been at 30 and stays there).

My search-fu says that this counter incrementing is fairly predictive of an unhealthy drive, so I wouldn't want to chance it.

https://kb.acronis.com/content/9134?ckattempt=1

 

[bigboxes]

You just bought it from Amazon. I'd just return it to Amazon. You shouldn't have to pay return shipping for a defective part. I'm assuming you're within 30 days. Have them send you out a healthy drive. That's what you're paying for. I'd first try it in a SATA port on the mobo first, just to make sure it's not the dock causing the issues.

 

[mikeymikec]

Here is the SMART screenshot for the drive.

That's bizarre but IMO a slam-dunk of an RMA job. I'd like to know under what circumstances that 'uncorrectable sector count' occurs, and I didn't get much joy from a google search; it gave me the answer I was logically aware of in that when a drive runs out of reserve sectors as a result of correcting many bad sectors then any further ones would be uncorrectable, but your drive doesn't have any corrected or pending sectors, it just went to a bad sector handling fail.

 

[aigomorla]

@Shmee

The controller on the drive is either toasted, failed to get its SMART info resetted properly, or the wrong firmware was probably loaded.

Does it make clicking noise? I noticed that is also a fair source of debugging if it clicks.

Eitherway, how old is the drive?
I would think of RMAing to back to the vendor, given that most He drives have a 3 yr refurbised warrenty unless you bought it from a really bad vendor.

 

[Shmee]

Yeah I will be returning it.

 

[fzabkar]

I notice that the drive has recorded 36,214 hours, but has only lost 5 points from the normalised Current value (5 = 100 - 95). At this rate, it is projected to hit the threshold at 82 years.

Weird.

 

[aigomorla]

I notice that the drive has recorded 36,214 hours, but has only lost 5 points from the normalised Current value (5 = 100 - 95). At this rate, it is projected to hit the threshold at 82 years.

Weird.

Nah, its a bad reset on the SMART, which is probably what shmee see.

Hence why i recommend him just returning it.

 

[fzabkar]

Another weird POH count:

https://forums.tomshardware.com/thr...t-values-within-reason.3633149/#post-21898678