Western Digital Blacks .. poor quality ?

Grooveriding

Diamond Member
Dec 25, 2008
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What has been other people's experience with the WD Black drives ? Mine has been horrible on the reliability front, and while the RMA process is smooth and fast, the replacements have been anything from DOA straight out of the box to rapidly dead or defective on another front.

I have quite a few WD Greens that have never needed an RMA and are working happily years later. I recently bought 8 WD 3TB Reds that I setup in a NAS box and they are just fine so far.

I've owned 5 WD 1TB Black drives. Only one has not needed to be RMAed. The other four have all failed in different ways from becoming invisible to any system they are plugged into, to clicking and clacking noises and causing file corruption to anything put on them.

Three out of four of those RMAs returned a defective drive. One of the RMAs was DOA out of the box, another failed within a month and the third will work for a short while but the drive ends up running so hot that it overheats and BSODs the computer it's plugged into. The thing literally is so hot I have to remove it with a dish towel. The overheating one is the most recent dead replacement drive I had. The first two I had to RMA again.. guess what.. both replacements are now dead. One died in a week and the other failed within months. I just have them stuffed away because I can't be bothered to RMA them again (which I have to pay shipping on to send the defectives back) and now I have this overheating replacement failure which again I cannot be bothered to RMA.

I tried speaking to WD to try to replace these 1TB Blacks with 2TB Greens, about the same price at retail. Didn't even get a response to my ticket, just closed it 5 days later.

These are what retail blacks look like

top.jpg



This is what you get in return for an RMA, with a small 'recertified' notation on the label

22-136-921-TS




TLDR: Western Digital Black hard drives are garbage and the returns are garbage amplified.
 

imagoon

Diamond Member
Feb 19, 2003
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I just looked at mine (all of them, they are in a hardware RAID array) and they have 1400 days of operational time on them. So they seem to work quite well for me.
 

Charlie98

Diamond Member
Nov 6, 2011
6,292
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WD blacks are usually considered one of the most reliable retail drives available.... the way you are blowing through them, I would be looking at something else causing the failure.
 

Insert_Nickname

Diamond Member
May 6, 2012
4,971
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I've owned 5 WD 1TB Black drives. Only one has not needed to be RMAed. The other four have all failed in different ways from becoming invisible to any system they are plugged into, to clicking and clacking noises and causing file corruption to anything put on them.

I had one 1TB black drive fail with those exact symptoms. On the other hand I have 4-5 (mix of 500GB, 640GB and 1TB) running in various systems for F&F. But I'd hardly call that a meaningful sample.

Anyone else experienced this...?
 

Elixer

Lifer
May 7, 2002
10,371
762
126
WD blacks are usually considered one of the most reliable retail drives available.... the way you are blowing through them, I would be looking at something else causing the failure.

That was true *before* the floods, after the floods, things are still up in the air.
Check the serial # of the HD's, if they are all from the same batch, yes, they could be poor/bad quality.

If these are pre flood drives, then check the PSU and also, it is wise to have a UPS as well.
 

tracerbullet

Golden Member
Feb 22, 2001
1,661
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81
FWIW, my sample size of n=1 for a 1.0TB drive, I used it for about 2 years and never had a problem. I sold it only to go to 3TB. Before I sold it I ran the long test on it and it showed no issues.
 

Tsavo

Platinum Member
Sep 29, 2009
2,645
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Both of mine - WD1001FALS - have 22,400+ hours on them without a single problem.
 

Joe_K

Junior Member
Jan 25, 2013
5
0
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You have me scared now. Just built a new rig 3 weeks ago with a WD black.
 

Insert_Nickname

Diamond Member
May 6, 2012
4,971
1,693
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You have me scared now. Just built a new rig 3 weeks ago with a WD black.

Don't be. The only thing you can be certain of is that a HDD WILL fail. Its only a question WHEN it happens. That black I wrote about failed after about 3 months. But I have had the cheapest Maxtor PoS drive last 10+ years. Its simply impossible to say, therefore the mantra BACKUP, BACKUP and BACKUP...
 

Anubis

No Lifer
Aug 31, 2001
78,712
427
126
tbqhwy.com
i had a 500GB xxxFALS fail on me last week, it worked when i went to bed and was dead in the morning. dead dead, would not even spin just made a high pitched squeel when turned on. i was only a few years old. was under warrenty and WDs RMA process is stupid easy and very fast. They replced it with a 750

i think thats the first one ive had outright fail ever, i have someth like 50 of them various in NAS boxes (1.5 and 3 TB models) at work and have only had to replace 3 due to SMART warnings - drives still work but show warnings in 2-4 various SMART things
 

ch33zw1z

Lifer
Nov 4, 2004
38,326
18,848
146
I have a 640, 750, 1.5, and 2x2Tb, the only one I've had trouble with is the 1.5. originally a FASS drive, died in a couple months, RMA'd. Fine so far, I believe it's now a FAEX model...
 

Grooveriding

Diamond Member
Dec 25, 2008
9,116
1,266
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Thanks for the replies. Maybe I am just having the worst string of luck ever on these.

Going to RMA the whack of them in one shot and see how the replacements go. If they are bad I'm done with these drives. :colbert: My thought is that these 'recertified' drives they return for RMAs are not up to par with brand new drives.
 

IndyColtsFan

Lifer
Sep 22, 2007
33,655
687
126
WD blacks are usually considered one of the most reliable retail drives available.... the way you are blowing through them, I would be looking at something else causing the failure.

This.

I have a home server I built with six 750 GB WD Black drives (RAID5) and it has been running 24/7 for nearly 6 years. I've had to replace 2 or 3 over the course of that time -- none of them were actually dead, but the SMART indicators showed potential problems so I swapped them under warranty. Many of these drives have 1900+ days of service, so I say they've been pretty good.
 

Zxian

Senior member
May 26, 2011
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Have your defective drives all been installed in the same system? I'd start pointing the finger at your PSU if so many drives have been failing in one computer. Voltage ripples and spikes can do strange things to hard drives, and an otherwise stable system can have power fluctuations that can cause hard drives to go bad.
 

blastingcap

Diamond Member
Sep 16, 2010
6,654
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I've never had a WD fail, and I've had everything from RE3's to Greens to normal (Blue?) WDs. Seagate? Yes. Samsung? Yes. That doesn't mean WD is infallible, but I'd rather have a WD than a Seagate, that's for sure.

WD Reds are very similar to WD Greens no matter how much they try to spin it otherwise via marketing. They don't have TLER and possibly slightly spruced up specs like anti-vibration pads or whatever but they are basically Greens.
 

Zxian

Senior member
May 26, 2011
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WD Reds are very similar to WD Greens no matter how much they try to spin it otherwise via marketing. They don't have TLER and possibly slightly spruced up specs like anti-vibration pads or whatever but they are basically Greens.

Similar, yes. The same? No. I've handled both. The weight is different. The vibrations are different (Reds are better). The noise levels are different (Reds are quieter).

5400RPM doesn't mean the same quality as Greens.


My server has previously had eight WD10EACS drives and four WD20EARS drives. All of them have been sold or donated to friends and family. All of them are still in operation today.
 

coffeejunkee

Golden Member
Jul 31, 2010
1,153
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Similar, yes. The same? No. I've handled both. The weight is different. The vibrations are different (Reds are better). The noise levels are different (Reds are quieter).

5400RPM doesn't mean the same quality as Greens.


My server has previously had eight WD10EACS drives and four WD20EARS drives. All of them have been sold or donated to friends and family. All of them are still in operation today.

You can't compare them at the moment, both Green and Red drives come with different amount of platters for same capacity. What you want is the 2 platter 2TB drive, but you might get one with 3 platters.

http://rml527.blogspot.ca/2010/10/hdd-platter-database-western-digital-35_9792.html
 

Fallengod

Diamond Member
Jul 2, 2001
5,908
19
81
I only own two older WD Blacks and have had them for like 4-5 years, and neither has had any issues yet. To me, it sounds like something else in your system is killing the drives. Thats a high failure rate. WD Blacks are supposed to be the most reliable.

It always puzzles me when people make threads like this with bizarre hardware issues.
 

Grooveriding

Diamond Member
Dec 25, 2008
9,116
1,266
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Have your defective drives all been installed in the same system? I'd start pointing the finger at your PSU if so many drives have been failing in one computer. Voltage ripples and spikes can do strange things to hard drives, and an otherwise stable system can have power fluctuations that can cause hard drives to go bad.

They've been used in different computers, but all have seen most of their use in the computer in my sig. I can't see it being my PSU though because I do have one black that never had issues and an RMAed black that is still perfectly fine.

I also have three greens in this computer that have never had a lick of problem. This along with all the other components in my system that are playing nice.

I don't know if there could be a PSU issue that is only affecting some drives or not though ? If that is possible then I suppose it could be that. Our home is sixty some odd years old and has had lots of rewiring done. I have my rig in sig plugged into an outlet that is on a fuse that is only powering my rig. Anything else and it blows.. :ninja: Actually that may not be the case any longer as I used to have 3 GTX 480s and that was most likely hitting the power much harder than my system is now.
 

murphyc

Senior member
Apr 7, 2012
235
0
0
It might be interesting to see the result from

Code:
smartctl -a /dev/sdX

for the affected dead drives before they are shipped away.
 

BFG10K

Lifer
Aug 14, 2000
22,709
2,997
126
Similar, yes. The same? No. I've handled both. The weight is different. The vibrations are different (Reds are better). The noise levels are different (Reds are quieter).
If the weight is different then you weren't using 1TB platter Greens. A WD10EZRX should weigh the same as a WD10EFRX.

Also here are some noise tests: http://uk.hardware.info/reviews/355...tb--3tb-review-special-nas-disks-noise-levels

The 1TB Green in those charts is the WD10EZRX (1TB platters) and it edges out the 1TB Red.

I have the WD10EZRX and it has almost zero noise and vibration, even when I hold it in my hand.
 

poohbear

Platinum Member
Mar 11, 2003
2,284
5
81
i've owned 3, all are rock solid. I passed my old one on to my parent's comp, its been running 4 years now no probs.
 

bendespain

Junior Member
Feb 13, 2014
1
0
0
So, I'm in the process of getting my 4th WD black 2 TB drive as a warranty replacement.

First the drive slowed way down and halted my system. Next drive was a re-certified one and it had chkdsk errors that continued to come up every other boot and took 4+ hours to resolve themselves and subsequently had errors like:

Replacing invalid securty id with default security id for file
and
Deleting orphan file record segment.

These errors and their chkdsk fixes apparently confused my Google Drive and made it think all my files had been deleted, so it deleted them in the cloud and then deleted my files on my drive cuz it was synced. I had to go onto Google Drive online and bulk remove stuff from my trash which produced a big mess cuz it mixed things I wanted deleted with things I didn't want deleted.

Next drive, I argued, should be new one, so they sent me a supposedly new one and it had volume initialization and formatting errors. So, I tried a bunch of stuff to finally get it formatted and it ended up just disappearing from Windows recognition after about 20 gigs of files transferred.

Next I called WD and they are now going to send me what they call a "prime" drive that I guess, they assure me, isn't re-certified.

Overall I've lost over a month of my time since the data I have on my drive is critical to my work and I haven't wanted to just work with my backup drive, I've wanted to really fix this and move forward. No I haven't lost critical data (only because I'm experienced enough to backup on my own and in the cloud (and trash)) but I've lost a lot of the peace of mind associated with actually fixing a problem and moving on.

Anyway, I signed up to this forum to be able to vent about this :) and let others know that they are not the only ones with HD consecutive failure problems. I'm always relieved when I find someone else dealing with the same frustrations as myself.

I used to think WD had great quality control, but my experience has me thinking they're losing it in the face of clearly superior SSDs or, I don't know, some sort of distraction the likes of MapReduce/Hadoop or Google paying them for failing drives... dunno
 
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pauldun170

Diamond Member
Sep 26, 2011
9,142
5,089
136
My current inventory of black drives
2X500gb AALS from 2008
1X 1tb FALS from 2009
1X 1tb FAEX from 2010 or maybe 2011 (can't remember)
1x 3tb FZEX Just picked up a few weeks ago.

Never an issue.