4 TB WD Red Died in 2.5 years

M

Marcus Fenix

Level H
Hi All,
Since yesterday night I have been tearing my hair off. My file server PC which I access via Windows Remote Connection froze up last night. I tried restarting and then forced a restart via the restart button on the cabinet.

It booted on the second try and then I saw that my 4 TB WD Red was not showing up anymore on Disk Management or My Computer. It was showing up as an unknown device on Device Manager though.

It almost gave me a heart attack and immediately I stripped the hard drive and plugged it into my main PC on the same SATA cable/SATA power combo on which my 8 year old 1 TB Seagate is still running in the main rig.

The PC waited in UEFI for a long time and then was stuck in the Windows startup screen with the Windows logo and circling dots stuff for almost an hour.

When I used to travel I always backed up my WD Red 4 TB to a WD Ultra 4 TB portable HDD but since I switched companies and don't have to travel anymore I basically got lazy and never did that since March 2017.Lesson learnt the hard way.:bawling::bawling:

I tried multiple times after that on both PC's but they always got stuck on the Windows startup screen whenever this HDD was connected.

I can also hear a scratching noise from the HDD which definitely means its f**ked. Today I went and got myself another WD Red 8 TB and set it up in two-way mirror i.e. software RAID using Windows Storage spaces with another WD Red 8 TB which I was already using since 1 year.

I never had a hard drive die on me and this includes 5 portable HDDs dating back from 2008 since I am very careful with those.

Now is there anyway some local shop can at least recover the data? I checked out Stellar Data Recovery but I can't afford that kind of rates(199$ for an analysis) for this.

Anybody from Kolkata has any idea? Please help me as I had almost 3.2 TB of data on this which would need a lot of time and effort to recoup via downloads.:banghead::banghead:
 
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Can't help with the data recovery, but everybody else please monitor S.M.A.R.T. attributes of your disks especially the temperatures. The temperature should be in the low 30's.
 
These are my temps on the file server currently where I am doing a 600 GB copy using the Hitachi 2.5 and the storage space of the 2x8 TB WD Reds. The brand new WD Red is running cool but the one year old one is at 52C.:confused:[DOUBLEPOST=1536949868][/DOUBLEPOST]
rajil.s said:
Can't help with the data recovery, but everybody else please monitor S.M.A.R.T. attributes of your disks especially the temperatures. The temperature should be in the low 30's.
Click to expand...
Tried the failed drive with Ubuntu Live USB and it failed to show up there. Should have got the hint when it was not visible on UEFI but I am down to trying anything now.
 

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In our normal indian weather, every single drive needs active cooling to keep it at a safe temp. anything close to 40C is asking for trouble.
 
Try setting up a clean PC and installing R-Studio and trying to make an image of the HDD. Unfortunately, to make the image & recover the data you will need double the capacity.
 
Isn't normal room temps for everyone close to 30C everyday? No way any hdd running 24/7 in a closed box will be below 40C even with a fan. The fan will be blowing 31C - 33C air on the drives. The drives will be around 7C - 10C higher than room temps even with fan. 42-45C is normal in my house without disk failing for years. I even have a 2.5 Seagate portable that was constantly at 47C for a year before it became completely full and is idle now. Heat does not kill hdd's. Bad power does.

Edit: The 2.5hdd inside my NUC is at 37C and the 3.5hdd in my hdd dock outside in open air is at 41C.

Most probably 3.5 hdd's give out more heat because of their size.
 
6pack said:
Isn't normal room temps for everyone close to 30C everyday? No way any hdd running 24/7 in a closed box will be below 40C even with a fan. The fan will be blowing 31C - 33C air on the drives. The drives will be around 7C - 10C higher than room temps even with fan. 42-45C is normal in my house without disk failing for years. I even have a 2.5 Seagate portable that was constantly at 47C for a year before it became completely full and is idle now. Heat does not kill hdd's. Bad power does.

Edit: The 2.5hdd inside my NUC is at 37C and the 3.5hdd in my hdd dock outside in open air is at 41C.

Most probably 3.5 hdd's give out more heat because of their size.
Click to expand...

https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/5xx6c6/wd_red_8tb_optimal_temperatures/

Seems like the tiny iBall Baby 342 cabinet which I picked for its size is not upto the challenge. Had cloned my OS Drive i.e. the Hitachi 2.5 1 TB to a 250 GB Samsung 860 Evo yesterday and it was working properly after selecting the SSD as boot drive. After I tested the OS by removing the old Hitachi and booting off the SSD only I went ahead and formatted the Hitachi. Then ran data copies for 9-10 hrs on the same PC. Now today the PC is failing to boot.
Its saying Your PC/Device needs to be repaired. A required device isn't connected or can't be accessed. And the icing on the cake is that I can't go into BIOS as the Logitech G510S I have is not detected before boot in this PC. FML.
 
I have had experiences with failing hard drives... it's horrible. Those clicking and scratching sounds are really heart-stopping to hear lol. Thankfully, I was able to get my data out of them somehow, by using Linux CD or copying my important data somehow. But yea, if it isn't showing up with even a Linux live CD, it's most probably gone. Data recovery will be costly. You can try searching in Google for data recovery centers in your city.
 
vivek.krishnan said:
Try setting up a clean PC and installing R-Studio and trying to make an image of the HDD. Unfortunately, to make the image & recover the data you will need double the capacity.
Click to expand...
Will this work keeping in mind that the UEFI in both PCs can't see this HDD?

Called up Stellar and they quoted Rs. 699 for an analysis. Will drop off the HDD on Monday for the recovery quote after analysis.
 
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Marcus Fenix said:
https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/5xx6c6/wd_red_8tb_optimal_temperatures/

Seems like the tiny iBall Baby 342 cabinet which I picked for its size is not upto the challenge. Had cloned my OS Drive i.e. the Hitachi 2.5 1 TB to a 250 GB Samsung 860 Evo yesterday and it was working properly after selecting the SSD as boot drive. After I tested the OS by removing the old Hitachi and booting off the SSD only I went ahead and formatted the Hitachi. Then ran data copies for 9-10 hrs on the same PC. Now today the PC is failing to boot.
Its saying Your PC/Device needs to be repaired. A required device isn't connected or can't be accessed. And the icing on the cake is that I can't go into BIOS as the Logitech G510S I have is not detected before boot in this PC. FML.
Click to expand...
Managed to boot into BIOS with a PS/2 keyboard from 2006.
Then tried to repair windows with a bootable Windows USB and found that Easeus didn't clone the EFI partition properly. Had to delete and recreate the EFI partition following this guide-
https://www.tenforums.com/general-s...efi-win10-boot-instruction-efi-partition.html

Generally with these kind of issues I had to collate instructions from multiple sources but this post turned out to be a one-stop shop.Thank God for small mercies.
 
Marcus Fenix said:
Will this work keeping in mind that the UEFI in both PCs can't see this HDD?

Called up Stellar and they quoted Rs. 699 for an analysis. Will drop off the HDD on Monday for the recovery quote after analysis.
Click to expand...

Its basically RAW partition cloning and is possible only if the disk is accessible. If not, you will need to give to 3rd party.

699 is for analysis. The cost of recovery will be in thousands.
 
6pack said:
Isn't normal room temps for everyone close to 30C everyday? No way any hdd running 24/7 in a closed box will be below 40C even with a fan. The fan will be blowing 31C - 33C air on the drives. The drives will be around 7C - 10C higher than room temps even with fan. 42-45C is normal in my house without disk failing for years. I even have a 2.5 Seagate portable that was constantly at 47C for a year before it became completely full and is idle now. Heat does not kill hdd's. Bad power does.

Edit: The 2.5hdd inside my NUC is at 37C and the 3.5hdd in my hdd dock outside in open air is at 41C.

Most probably 3.5 hdd's give out more heat because of their size.
Click to expand...

Nope, You're wrong about that. I had an external seagate backup plus desktop 2tb almost die when it hit 45 degrees. I was doing an active file xfer and noticed a drastic slowdown in speed and immediately shut it down. Luckily the only damage was a bad sector. Realised the case wasn't cool enough so pulled it out and now using it as an internal drive in my pc. Running at 32 degrees now.

Had a similar experience with a wd passport 1tb. heat made it slow down. no damage. So i popped the top off the case and every time i need to do some long xfers i keep the top off, and it runs nice and cool.

I guess up to 40-42 degrees is ok, anything over that, sustained, is asking for trouble.[DOUBLEPOST=1537030340][/DOUBLEPOST]p.s. internal means in the cm 430 drive cage with a 140mm front intake fan blowing over the drives. I ran out of room and needed to add an old 320gb seagate as a temp/scratch disk, and installed it in a 5.25" bay using an adapter. it was running at 37 to 40C. So i stuck an 80mm fan in front of it and it's also at 32-33C now.
 
Julian said:
Nope, You're wrong about that. I had an external seagate backup plus desktop 2tb almost die when it hit 45 degrees. I was doing an active file xfer and noticed a drastic slowdown in speed and immediately shut it down. Luckily the only damage was a bad sector. Realised the case wasn't cool enough so pulled it out and now using it as an internal drive in my pc. Running at 32 degrees now.

Had a similar experience with a wd passport 1tb. heat made it slow down. no damage. So i popped the top off the case and every time i need to do some long xfers i keep the top off, and it runs nice and cool.

I guess up to 40-42 degrees is ok, anything over that, sustained, is asking for trouble.[DOUBLEPOST=1537030340][/DOUBLEPOST]p.s. internal means in the cm 430 drive cage with a 140mm front intake fan blowing over the drives. I ran out of room and needed to add an old 320gb seagate as a temp/scratch disk, and installed it in a 5.25" bay using an adapter. it was running at 37 to 40C. So i stuck an 80mm fan in front of it and it's also at 32-33C now.
Click to expand...

I am concerned with the dirty power thing as well as cooling since my iBall Bay 342 cabinet has zero airflow for the sake of compactness and has an el-cheapo non-standard PSU which came with the case. I have a 2 year old APC 1100VA UPS so there's lower chance for the UPS to be a culprit.
I am too using the 1 year old WD Red in a vertical 5.25 bay and its idling at 49C at 30C ambient temp.
https://www.iball.co.in/Product/Technology-Accessories/Cabinets/BABY-CABINETS/Baby-342/818
Just look at the dimensions-
iBall Baby 342
WxHxD=5.3 x 14.2 x 15 inch

Should I get something like this-
https://www.amazon.in/Cooler-Master...UTF8&qid=1537033634&sr=8-1&keywords=elite+110
CoolerMaster Elite 130
WxHxD=9.4 x 8.2 x 15.7 inch

BTW can you guys suggest a good PSU with the lowest power output as these are the specs of my file server-
Asrock J4205-ITX(TDP of only 10W)
http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/J4205-ITX/
1xSamsung 860 Evo SATA SSD
2xWD Red 8 TB HDD
1xHGST 2.5 HDD
1x 4 TB WD Red HDD(Should be the RMA replacement)
 
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rajil.s said:
Can't help with the data recovery, but everybody else please monitor S.M.A.R.T. attributes of your disks especially the temperatures. The temperature should be in the low 30's.
Click to expand...
Are you sure about that?

Have 2 NAS from Synology and WD... in WD the temps are around 50 with going down to 45 sometimes. Synology though is at 35 to 37 on checking now, but ho historical data as I never checked.
 
ajackson said:
Are you sure about that?

Have 2 NAS from Synology and WD... in WD the temps are around 50 with going down to 45 sometimes. Synology though is at 35 to 37 on checking now, but ho historical data as I never checked.
Click to expand...
Which drives do you have on your NAS?
I am seeing the WD Reds idling at 43C with ambient temp of 33C.
 
Need a suggestion from you guys. Have locked down the CM Elite 130 as my case replacement as the front 120 mm fan in that case blows air directly on two hard drives (Lower front and front inner side). Was really interested in the Fractal Node 304 but its not available in India at sane prices.
https://www.bit-tech.net/reviews/tech/cases/cooler-master-elite-130-review/2/

Now the thing that is stumping me is a low power output fully modular/semi-modular PSU as I have been spoiled by the fully modular Corsair RM850x on my main PC and can't go back to the hydra's head of a standard PSU with connectors I don't need e.g. PCIE/extra SATA cables.

This is my shortlist -
https://mdcomputers.in/smps#/modular-fully-modular,modular-neo-eco-modular,modular-semi-modular-a403-vFULLY MODULAR,NEO ECO MODULAR,SEMI MODULAR/availability=1/sort=p.price/order=ASC/limit=16

The lowest output seems to be Antec NE 550M which is the cheapest of the lot @4k.

Second option out of this list is the Corsair CX650M but its more expensive @6k.Both PSUs are huge overkill for 3 HDD,1 SSD and a 10W TDP fanless embedded CPU mini-ITX motherboard. Maybe the PSU will draw more power alone than the system itself.:p

I am a bit biased towards Corsair as my VX550v2 ran with no issues for 7 years+ and was just recently upgraded to the RM850x. I searched quite a bit for the Corsair CX430M which is a 430W semi-modular unit but its out of stock everywhere.

Any idea guys? Thanks in advance.

I have budgeted 20k for data recovery+case/PSU upgrade. If data recovery eats up my budget then I will have to stick to the existing crappy iBall Baby 342 case.:(
 
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