I had being running since november 2011 two WD Caviar Black 640GB (bought in july 2011) hdd’s in RAID 0 and RAID 1, i mean, first 100GB of each HDD for RAID 0 making a 200GB volumen and the rest in RAID 1 on Intel P67 chipset and after more than 2 years being using those hard drives i just realized that 1 one of them is outperforming according to its read speed and some S.M.A.R.T. reports shown in HDtune and HDDscan.
Im realy worried about it since 2 years is not much time for a Caviar Black i think (but i know many things can happen).
Im not sure what would it be and what those reports mean but i hope you people can help me with this. I wonder if that RAID configuration somehow damaged the HDD or what. I tried changing SATA port but got the same result.
i also have a 1TB Caviar Green and two more than 4 years 80GB WD hdd’s in other pc’s that seems to be ok.
Im not really sure when the think started. A few days ago i ran a PCmark test suite and got less points in general than before. Of course i stopped the RAID configs and checked each drive separately.
i added some screen caps made back in 2011 and some recents of the BAD hdd and 2 screen caps of the RAID 0 read tests. Hope you can tell me what those read graphics mean. Check the date.
Used ASRock p67 extreme 4 and Windows 7 HB 64 bit.
Blacks are not good for RAID because they lack firmware or hardware error revoery to prevent dropouts, so I’d take this as a warning sign the RAID will go into degraded mode soon.
I would like to know whats going on with the HDD. I wonder why it lost a little speed performance compared to the begining while the other HDD looks almost the same. What would be causing that?. I already stopped the RAIDs before making this post and im working the HDDs as separate volumes but i still wonder if its a physical damage or what? and if it can be fixed or if this apply to RMA or something. Warranty check says it expires in 2016 for both HDD’s.
Hope someone can give me a more technical answer i think.
I was reading some posts about TLER and people complaining about WD blacks dropping out of the array but i belive in 2 years of being running those RAIDs i never had the problem of a HDD dropping out of the array, just the RAID 1 entering in REBUILD mode after a power failure or OS forced shutdown due to a program freezing the system or something like that, i neither had read/write errors or corrupted files but i guess that would be something hard to prove, maybe those errors wont be visible or easy to detect.
I ran those drives in RAID mode because i read in a WD specification sheet (not aviable these days i think because many models are not aviable now) they were tested and recommend for DESKTOP/CONSUMER raid environments.
So, all that time i never complained about data errors or HDD dropping out of the array just the RAID rebuilding RARELY but i wonder if running those kinds of disks in RAID mode can somehow damage them.
i add a screen cap of part of the WD data sheet i mentioned, which i downloaded from their website years ago. I put a red square near the line.
The disk is showing 3 reallocated sectors, hence the breaks in your benchmarks. Basically 3 sectors have gone bad and can’t store data any more so they have been replaced with 3 of the spare sectors. When you are sequentially reading your disk, when you get to one of these reallocated (replaced) sectors, the drive has to seek away to the part of the disk that holds the spare sectors. So you sequential test isn’t sequential at the points where you have reallocated sectors, hence the inverted spikes in performance.
3 reallocated sectors is enough to RMA the drive, which I recommend you do
Thanks for your replay but how can i be sure that the HDD applies for RMA.
I think WD data lifeguard diagnostic tool is not making any warning about it. If i get in contact with WD support guys, will they ask for screen caps or something that proves the HDD applies for RMA?
I few days ago i just realized that HDD was giving raw read and write errors since the begining and you can see it in the second screen cap NOV 2011. After the read tests i did during the days i post this thread that number increased above 6000, the write error stays at 742, not getting read or write error messages from the OS while copying files or working with that HDD just the slow speed. but i’ll just stop using that HDD for a while till i get some cash to RMA it.
Thanks for your replay but how can i be sure that the HDD applies for RMA.
