Personal computing discussed

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donek
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HELP - External WD Elements

Thu Feb 14, 2013 9:15 am

Hi,

My hard drive WD Elements (2TB) recently starts to work not stable. Without any reason, I had problems to move or copy some files from my HDD. Sometimes my computer doesn't recognize my HDD.

I tried to use WD Data Lifeguard Diagnostic for Windows "Extended Test", but it failed because some errors. It doesn't even want to finish the test. It just hangs around ~15% of scanned sectors and completely stops.
When I did "Quick Test", it passed..

I tried "HDDScan-3.3" and I've got S.M.A.R.T. report:

Image


Can someone tell me what is wrong with my external HDD and what I can do to fix it?

Thanks for any suggestions.
 
just brew it!
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Re: HELP - External WD Elements

Thu Feb 14, 2013 9:20 am

It looks like it is developing bad sectors.

Unfortunately, the only thing you can really do at this point is copy off as much of your data as you can to another drive, and replace (or RMA if still under warranty) the failing drive. Once a drive starts to develop lots of bad sectors there isn't any way to "fix" it yourself, and it will only continue to get worse.
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maxxcool
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Re: HELP - External WD Elements

Thu Feb 14, 2013 10:18 am

^^ What brew said. The drive is * physically* damaged. You need a new one and you need to copy off as much as possible **right now** before the drive stops powering on.
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Ditiris
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Re: HELP - External WD Elements

Thu Feb 14, 2013 11:41 am

My condolences. As others have said, your drive is on its way out. No mechanical drive is perfect. Basically at the time they are manufactured they have some sectors on the disk that don't work. The drive has a list of these bad sectors, and simply doesn't put data there. On a healthy disk, this list either doesn't grow after the drive is manufactured, or grows very slowly. On a disk going bad, the bad sector count increases. Yours has increased to the maximum capacity. Basically your disk is continuing to develop bad sectors, but the drive can't keep track of them anymore because the bad sector list has run out of room. If I were you, I'd power the drive off immediately, buy a new drive, then copy over the data to the new drive.
 
mortifiedPenguin
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Re: HELP - External WD Elements

Thu Feb 14, 2013 12:53 pm

What the others said. It's definitely developing bad sectors and the defect list for relocating sectors has exceeded its high threshold - meaning its exceeded the number of bad sectors the guys at WD decided to account for before throwing a SMART exception. Your Spin Up time seems to indicate that your drive is having difficultly spinning up from idle, for whatever reason, and Windows might be dropping the drive due to timeout. As maxxcool suspects, your drive has probably been physically damaged, and just guessing from the SMART report, might be a servo (motor) issue or scratched medium (platter).

I highly recommend getting what files you can off of it and RMAing the drive. I'd also recommend that you avoid plugging it in until you are about to start copying those files since your drive might have a very short lifetime remaining and you really don't want to burn that time up by having it just sit there while you're doing other things.
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Arvald
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Re: HELP - External WD Elements

Thu Feb 14, 2013 1:27 pm

Western Digital is easy to work with on RMA, including the option of advance ship to get you the replacement before you send (use this to get approved shipping materials).

If you are outside the USA I found WD to be a bit more of a pain to deal with than other vendors (drive must pass through customs, just label it clearly as a defective return and include any paperwork they send you)
 
donek
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Re: HELP - External WD Elements

Sat Feb 16, 2013 5:18 pm

Hi,
Thank you Guys for every information. Unfortunately My warranty has finished few months ago it means I'm s...w.
I will have to buy new one. :cry:
Thanks again !!!!
 
Captain Ned
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Re: HELP - External WD Elements

Sat Feb 16, 2013 5:47 pm

donek wrote:
Hi,
Thank you Guys for every information. Unfortunately My warranty has finished few months ago it means I'm s...w.
I will have to buy new one. :cry:
Thanks again !!!!

Never hurts to ask for an RMA. All they can do is say no and depending on their own internal RMA experience there may be a stealth warranty extension.
What we have today is way too much pluribus and not enough unum.
 
ludi
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Re: HELP - External WD Elements

Mon Feb 18, 2013 12:22 pm

Yeah, don't give up without checking. You can do it on their website -- just navigate to the "Support" tab on their website and then click through to the "Warranty check" page. They allow you to check by serial number.
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donek
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Re: HELP - External WD Elements

Sun Feb 24, 2013 11:44 pm

THANKS !!!!
P.S.
It didn't work. :x

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