WD 1GB GP Caviar - SMART Failure

[CoffeeEater]

Hi,
I just got a WD 1GB Caviar GP drive and it failed a SMART test as soon as I plugged it in. I originally had two HDs - 320gb Deskstar and a 500GB WD. I switched out the Deskstar for the Green drive and it say SMART failure on boot. Then I'm getting errors in Vista.

Ran HP Diagnostic and WD Diagnostic tools. Both indicate SMART failure. It passed the extended test on WD, but fails the quick test. Fails both tests in the HP tools.

WD Says: "Quick Test on drive 2 did not complete! Status code = 04 (Unknown failed test element), Failure Checkpoint = 96 (Unknown Test). SMART self-test did not complete on drive 2!"

HP Says: "HP Diagnostic Tools Error HD521-1W" for both SMART tests.

I overwrote the entire drive with zeroes using WD's tools, but I still get the same errors.

RMA? There's absolutely nothing on this drive, so I don't care if it fails.

 

[egale]

RMA!!! It is broken.

 

[CoffeeEater]

Thanks. Western Digital RMA or Newegg RMA?

 

[Blain]

First place to start reading would be the Newegg "Returns(RMA)" FAQ's

 

[Net]

is there any good free smart test software?

 

[taltamir]

smart will catch a percent of drive failures, when smart tells you the drive failed, don't try to fix it, it is 100% certain that the drive is broken and needs replacing.