Should I be worried about my new drive?

[berlin88]

I just purchased a new 1TB Caviar Black from Best Buy yesterday, to replace one of my other 1TB drives that was going bad and getting warning messages from HDTune.

I initially loaded the drive on one of my dads computers (Windows XP 64 bit), to test it out and make sure it was fully operational. The WD Lifeguard and HDTune gave it a pass, and said it ws ok.

This morning, I put in the hard drive in my computer and loaded Windows 7 on the new 1TB Caviar Black drive. I then loaded HDTune and the WD Lifeguard program and did all the usual tests. I also loaded the trial version of HDDLife, and had that evaluate the drive as well.

WD Data Lifeguard gave my new drive a pass on both Windows XP (64) and Windows 7 (64), and HD Tune pro gave it a pass on both as well, albeight with different numbers.


When I tested the new drive on my dads XP machine, here are the numbers from HDTune Pro.

When I put the new drive in my regular computer, and loaded Windows 7 on it, here were the new numbers from HDTune pro.

Here is the data from HDDlife, when I ran the program under Windows 7. Couldn't get it to work on Windows XP, so I could only run it on Windows 7. Gives my brand new drive an 85% on both performance and health status. Is 85% for a new drive bad?

I also have an existing 1TB WD Caviar black, that also gets 84% on both the performance and fitness numbers from HDDlife. I should also add, that I have had my exiting motherboard for 2 years now, and I have now purchased a total of 4 new drives in that time period, with three of those new drives replacing drives that had gone bad or were starting to go bad.

Any chance my motherboard is the cause of multiple drives going bad?


My current systems is as follows:

Antec 1200 v2
Corsair TX 650
Asus M4A87TD
AMD Phenom II x4 965 Black Edition
8GB Kingston Hyper X DDR3 1600 (4GB x2)
EVGA GTX 660 OC (just got this at Best Buy to replace my old EVGA 9800GTX+)
Asus budget sound card
LG Blue Ray drive
1TB WD Caviar Black
1TB WD Caviar Black
1TB Samsung Spinpoint drive
1TB Seagate Baraccuda (It's from 2009 or 2010 I think)
Windows 7 64 bit
Samsung monitor
Logitech Z-640 speakers

 

[phil22]

You cannot reliably test a system hard drive using Windows-based testing software that's installed on that same hard drive.

You must either fit the drive to another PC and test it there (as you did for some but not all the tests), or leave the drive in-situ and test it with DOS-based diagnostic software which loads from a bootable CD. WD provide a DOS version of their LifeGuard Diagnostic software as well as the Windows version. The Windows version is for testing non-system internal or external hard drives.

 

[berlin88]

You cannot reliably test a system hard drive using Windows-based testing software that's installed on that same hard drive.

You must either fit the drive to another PC and test it there (as you did for some but not all the tests), or leave the drive in-situ and test it with DOS-based diagnostic software which loads from a bootable CD. WD provide a DOS version of their LifeGuard Diagnostic software as well as the Windows version. The Windows version is for testing non-system internal or external hard drives.

I put the new 1TB WD drive back in my dads XP machine last night, and ran the same tests again. This time, I got different numbers on HDTune. HDTune still gave my drive a pass, but some of the numbers were different.

When I ran the tests Friday night, I got one set of numbers, and after testing the new drive in my machine, I put it back in my dads XP machine, and ran the same tests again, with HDTune giving me different numbers.


Friday Night test numbers on XP machine. (before trying the drive in my Windows 7 machine)

Saturday night test numbers (on XP machine) after trying the drive on my Windows 7 machine.