WD HD Test Failed, Then Passed

[camnipotent]

Hey all,

I recently purchased a Western Digital 1TB hard drive from newegg.com. It's the Western Digital Caviar Black WD1001FALS 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB drive.

After I physically installed it, I formatted the disk and began moving all of my big files (videos, audio collection, etc.) from my nearly full drive to my new 1TB drive. After the files were all completely moved, I used the Western Digital Lifeguard Diagnostic Tool to run some tests on the drive to make sure it was working correctly.

There are several options to run diagnostics:
1. Quick Test (about 20 second bad sector test)
2. Extended Test (about 3 hour bad sector test)
3. Write Zeroes (completely blanking the drive)
4. View Test Results

To be thorough, I ran the Quick Test and Extended Test. The drive passed the Quick Test, but failed the Extended Test with an error code '08-'. This obviously made me nervous. I had a suspicion that the test failed because there was some data on the disk, so I backed up all of the data that I had placed on the 1TB (my new drive) back to my old, primary drive. I then used the Write Zeroes diagnostic option so I could completely erase the drive and start from scratch. After the Write Zeroes process was complete, I reformatted the drive and ran both the Quick Test and Extended Test again. This time, the drive passed both.

My question is: Should I be concerned that the drive failed the Extended Test the first time? Should I apply for an RMA, or am I okay because it passed the latest tests?

I called technical support and I was told that I should be okay with the test results. They said the writing zeroes process repaired any bad sectors, and the drive is working fine. Still, I'm upset that the drive initially failed the Extended Test and I'm not sure what I should do.

Obviously, I'm going to continue running tests (probably on a daily basis) for the next few weeks.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!

 

[Matno]

Mine did the same thing. (640GB Caviar black). However, I had been having ongoing problems with freezing (spontaneous rebooting or just plain freezing) for a year with this drive. Also, I was unable to run a full backup of the drive or even run chkdsk (it would always freeze at a certain spot). Finally decided to RMA it when I was no longer able to boot, even in safe mode (but could still access the data from another computer). It failed Quick Test consistently at about 7 seconds into the test. Extended Test also failed with a "too many bad sectors" to continue error.

Just as a precaution, I ran Write Zeros on the whole drive, and suddenly it will pass both Quick and Extended tests. However, I'm not willing to go through the effort of reinstalling everything only to have this happen again. Not worth it. Hopefully the replacement drive will not give me any problems. I really do like the drive.

 

[DaddyoBotnik]

250GB Caviar Black. Lots of issues and errors. Failed Quick Test and Extended tests. After write Zeros it passes all tests???
Replaced drive because I don't trust it, and new drives are so inexpensive.

 

[Hawkeye22]

Did you run a quick format or a full format on the drive? I find that doing a full format on the drive the 1st time it's used seems to prevent this issue, although it sucks to wait that long for a full format. I'll usually run the full format overnight. If I need to format it again later, I use the quick format.