WD Red Drive Failure and Impressive WD Service

Nem · 12 Nov 2018 at 16:11

Hi all

Just a tale of incredible service to share for a change.

Bought a 4tb WD Red drive in August 2015, after 18 months it began to fail in windows and the WD life guard software also confirmed there were problems with the drive. This was sent back to WD on an RMA and a new drive was out in under a week,

Fast forward 21 months and the replacement drive has done exactly the same, showing as a drive in windows but can't read it and also a smart error being given.

Initially couldn't remember if it was a 3 or 5 year warranty so tried to RMA and it showed the warranty was expired. Dropped a quick support note to WD about it saying it had already been replaced after 18 months initially and this had failed again, within 24 hours got a reply back saying it was out of warranty but they had manually extended it by 4 months to allow me to raise an RMA and get it replaced.

Just waiting for the replacement in the post now.

Always bought WD hard drives and will continue to do so

miceormen · 18 Nov 2018 at 14:16

How are you chomping through WD reds? Why are they failing?

Doogles · 18 Nov 2018 at 14:40

miceormen said:
How are you chomping through WD reds? Why are they failing?

Drives fail sometimes, I've never had one of my own die that I've owned from new but it happens, always backup!

tamzzy · 18 Nov 2018 at 14:42

miceormen said:
Why are they failing?

if i recall correctly having read it somewhere before, WD warranty replacements are always refurbs

Nem · 19 Nov 2018 at 08:23

Got no idea why it failed the first time, it's a home media server for Plex mostly sat doing absolutely nothing at all!

The replacement for that was possibly a recon drive, wasn't branded as a WD Red at all, but had the same part numbers.

Nem · 19 Nov 2018 at 10:55

So, checked today and the replacement drive has shipped out, but it's a slightly different part number, WD40EFRX-68WT0N0 was sent back (and also sent back and received 18 months ago), and WD40EFRX-68N32N0 has been shipped out.

WD40EFRX-68N32N0 is still a 4tb WD Red drive but doing a quick google I found this info out:

The 68WT0N0 has 4 x 1TB platters and 8 heads. It is a heavy drive at about 700g. I’ve also personally had RMAs involving this model, but of course WD would never admit to a systemic issue.
The 68N32N0 is a newer model with 3 x 1.33TB platters and only 6 heads. It is lighter, at around 638g in the anti-static bag, and marginally faster than the older model. The top cover is quite different as well.
On average less platters/heads means better reliability (less things that can fail), so the 68N32N0 should be a better drive overall.

So fingers crossed as I'll not be having this replaced under warranty again of course.