Issue moving data to WD Red 3tb

Prophet · 20 Jul 2013 at 11:12

I've just installed a WD Red 3tb into my Microserver. I want to move all of my movies to it from a NAS drive, however when I attempt a copy it stalls after a minute.

If I copy to another drive in the server it works fine sitting at 11MB/Sec as usual but when using the WD Red it only stays at 11MB/Sec for a minute then drops to 500Kb/sec and then freezes. Done a scan of the drive etc but it all looks good.

I'm running Server 2012 as the OS.

Any ideas?

Prophet · 20 Jul 2013 at 11:32

Update. It happens if I copy internally from any other drive to the WD Red. Good data rate for a few seconds then drops to zero!

Prophet · 20 Jul 2013 at 12:37

Yeah I'm leaning towards a faulty drive

Prophet · 21 Jul 2013 at 23:30

Can someone sanity check my diagnostics so far?

Server 2012 and Windows 7 64bit systems:

Partitioned it as MBR (2TB) then tried to format - Format never finishes, Server hangs format task is killed.

Removed partition and created GPT (3TB) and tried to format - Same result.

After both formats I rebooted the server/PC and could see the drive but when I try to copy any data it only manages around 1GB then hangs.

Is there anything I'm missing or is the drive ******?

Prophet · 22 Jul 2013 at 00:23

It's the N54L so should handle it with ease.

I've tried it on my i5 Windows 7 system and Macbook Pro via a USB caddy.

None of them can complete a partition/format process

Prophet · 22 Jul 2013 at 17:47

RMAing for replacement.

Hope I'm not goingt to regret it!

Prophet · 22 Jul 2013 at 19:25

rotor said:
I have two 3 TB Reds in my N36L and am super happy with them...

I'm hoping to be super happy with mine once I get a replacement!

Prophet · 22 Jul 2013 at 20:04

I'll give that a go once I've got a working drive. Thanks for the recommendation.

Prophet · 23 Jul 2013 at 00:00

yer_averagejoe said:
Did you check your cables? I've had exactly the same issue before with loose sata cables

Yeah. There's no way it's the cables as I tried so many different connections (caddy, drive bay enclosure and internal SATA cable)

Prophet · 28 Jul 2013 at 00:15

devious93 said:
You seem to have made the best approach so far, I'd try a firmware update if one is available for this drive as that can generally resolve this issue. Does seem to be a faulty drive though, if that fails RMA it, my external HDD has just started doing the same thing so I know the feeling, sadly mine is 4 months out of its 3 year warranty.

I tried the firmware as a last attempt but unfortunately it didn't resolve the issue.

Have you tried to RMA your drive? Sometimes the manufacturer will replace it if it's warranty has only recently expired.

Prophet · 2 Aug 2013 at 21:57

Further update.

Sent the old drive back DOA and got a replacement drive. Installed that today, created a partition and formatted OK. Great

Nope. It turn itself off, so I rebooted and was greeted with the click of death and some other odd sounds. Two DOA drives delivered and 3 weeks wasted!

I don't care what people say about WD Red drives. In my experience they suck 100% of the time!

Prophet · 3 Aug 2013 at 14:45

I agree it is bad luck. However if you look at the odds of getting two DOA drives back to back it's enough 'bad luck' to make sure I never buy another WD Red drive.