Tell me my Black isn't crispy toast?

[zCypher]

So I have my main OS/boot drive, a 240GB SSD (Mushkin Chronos Deluxe), so far things have been fine with that. For some time longer than the SSDs, I have had a 1TB Western Digital Black drive. Before the SSDs, this Black served as my primary drive.

The WD1001FALS which acted as my main drive has been going strong as my apps/games drive ever since I started with SSDs. Shortly after my dabbling into SSDs, I got a second Black, this time by the name of WD1002FAEX. Equally a 1TB black, I tasked this one to carry documents and backups of stuff on the other drives. It has been fine for some time as well. I recently acquired two 3TB Greens. Their names are of little note.

Recently I noticed that my WD1002FAEX has been acting up a bit. I only noticed it while using Windows XP in a VirtualBox VM at first, but now it seems that any time I try to access the drive it pauses for 10-15 seconds before doing whatever I asked. During that pause, I see the LED on the case light up, and I see "100% active time" in task manager.

I didn't have that much important stuff, so I made a second copy of whatever I did care to keep. I then used the Western Digital tool for the Black to write zeros to the whole drive. I then recreated a partition, and upon the very first click to access the drive I got the same "nope, go to hell, sir" lag.

I'm not too sure how to go about pinpointing what it is that's wrong, maybe you can give me some tips. I didn't find anything weird in the SMART data. I suppose issue could be anywhere between hard drive and motherboard, I don't suspect any OS-level issues since everything else works fine and issue persists after wiping the drive.

When I'm not so lazy I will try changing out the SATA cable to see if that does it. Anything else I can look out for?

 

[Puffnstuff]

You should run the wd utility to determine if your drive has gone bad. You'll need it before you request an rma if your drive is still under warranty.

 

[Blain]

Tell me my Black isn't crispy toast?

Ok... Your Black isn't crispy toast.

Run WD Data Lifeguard Diagnostics for Windows and chech to see what, if any, error codes are reported.

 

[zCypher]

The first time I ran it, it gave me an error. The second time it passed, then I ran the extended test which it passed. The first attempt at writing zeros to the drive gave me some errors as if the drive was in use (as far as I know it wasn't), second attempt to write zeros to the drive went through fine.

I went back into the utility and grabbed the test results:

Test Option: QUICK TEST
Model Number: WDC WD1002FAEX-00Z3A0
Unit Serial Number: WD-WCATR4868954
Firmware Number: 05.01D05
Capacity: 1000.20 GB
SMART Status: PASS
Test Result: FAIL
Test Error Code: 03- Read SMART Attribute command error on drive 2!
Test Time: 14:32:35, January 07, 2013

Test Option: QUICK TEST
Model Number: WDC WD1002FAEX-00Z3A0
Unit Serial Number: WD-WCATR4868954
Firmware Number: 05.01D05
Capacity: 1000.20 GB
SMART Status: PASS
Test Result: PASS
Test Time: 00:42:54, January 08, 2013


Test Option: EXTENDED TEST
Model Number: WDC WD1002FAEX-00Z3A0
Unit Serial Number: WD-WCATR4868954
Firmware Number: 05.01D05
Capacity: 1000.20 GB
SMART Status: PASS
Test Result: PASS
Test Time: 03:34:48, January 08, 2013

 

[groberts101]

Sounds like some type of driver/firmware issue.. or maybe the drive is timing out/spinning down. Possibly the systems power mgmt relating to the drives and what ports/sata chips it's located on too.

I would eliminate the many variables involved by imaging the OS from your SSD onto the suspect drive and boot to it while connected to the same port that the SSD was originally connected to. I'd bet that the issue goes away completely when you boot to a known good image running off a known good port.

 

[zCypher]

There does not appear to be any available firmware update for this drive. I just made sure all my sata cables are tight on the motherboard and reseated power/sata at the hard drive. Waiting to see if anything changes. I did check the power settings on the computer, and the hard drives are set to never turn off, it's one of the first things I change on a fresh install.

 

[ch33zw1z]

http://support.wdc.com/techinfo/general/errorcodes.asp

 

[Puffnstuff]

Have you tried a different cable or perhaps a new cable? I've had them go bad before, it just happens.