[SOLVED] 2 DOA WD Black drives, is it me or them?

sheehan469

Honorable
Feb 13, 2015
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0
10,530
Over the past month and a half I have purchased and immediately had to RMA two Western Digital Black HDDs, 6TB, directly from the WD online store. The first wouldn’t even mount, didn’t show up anywhere in my system other than as a bunch of question marks in CrystalDisk, wouldn’t even show up in WD’s diagnostic software. Spent a few hours trying minor changes, different cables, different ports, etc etc, nothing helped. Got another one (new, not a refurbished replacement) which did mount, but would not initialize. It gave I/O port errors. It was recognized by CrystalDisk and showed up off and on in WD’s software. I contacted WD who after 30 seconds of conversation told me to return it and try again.
One drive DOA is bad luck, two drives in a row coming in DOA is the start of a pattern. I’ve used their 1TB Blue drives for years with no issue, and needed a size and speed upgrade. Are the Black drives unreliable? Could I be causing this issue somehow? Should I take this as a cue to look at a different brand?
Specs to my system are here: https://pcpartpicker.com/user/exoscout/saved/rzHgt6
 
Solution
The WD Blacks are no more defective than other HDDs. It is possible that you received two duds, but that seems highly unlikely.

Do you have one of the HDDs in question now?

It would be interesting to install on of the Blacks and then boot a Live Linux distro to see how a different OS sees the devices. Even under Windows, it would be useful to see how Disk Management detects them, as well.

By the way, is your motherboard BIOS the most recent version available for it?

sheehan469

Honorable
Feb 13, 2015
26
0
10,530
Were you trying to use the 6TB HHDs in lieu of, or in addition to the HDDs you already have?
I initially tried removing one of the HDDs and using the new 6TB drive in its place with the same cables.

With the replacement drive after I RMA’d I left the 4 current drives connected, and added the new drive as a 5th drive. When that failed I tried replacing one of the 4 drives with the new one.
 

COLGeek

Cybernaut
Moderator
I initially tried removing one of the HDDs and using the new 6TB drive in its place with the same cables.

With the replacement drive after I RMA’d I left the 4 current drives connected, and added the new drive as a 5th drive. When that failed I tried replacing one of the 4 drives with the new one.
Also, were you connecting to Intel or Asmedia SATA ports? See pages 1-33 and 1-34 of the manual:

https://dlcdnets.asus.com/pub/ASUS/mb/LGA1150/Z97-PRO/E9062_Z97-PRO.pdf
 

COLGeek

Cybernaut
Moderator
The WD Blacks are no more defective than other HDDs. It is possible that you received two duds, but that seems highly unlikely.

Do you have one of the HDDs in question now?

It would be interesting to install on of the Blacks and then boot a Live Linux distro to see how a different OS sees the devices. Even under Windows, it would be useful to see how Disk Management detects them, as well.

By the way, is your motherboard BIOS the most recent version available for it?
 
Solution

sheehan469

Honorable
Feb 13, 2015
26
0
10,530
The WD Blacks are no more defective than other HDDs. It is possible that you received two duds, but that seems highly unlikely.

Do you have one of the HDDs in question now?

It would be interesting to install on of the Blacks and then boot a Live Linux distro to see how a different OS sees the devices. Even under Windows, it would be useful to see how Disk Management detects them, as well.

By the way, is your motherboard BIOS the most recent version available for it?

I do not have either of the drives anymore as WD suggested returning them.

The BIOS is version 2012, released 11/2014. I've never updated it past initial installation for fear of doing more harm than good.

This is the info I was able to get from the drives - disk management, crystaldisk, dlgdiag - including current fully functioning setup, 1st DOA drive, 2nd drive with I/O error.
 

sheehan469

Honorable
Feb 13, 2015
26
0
10,530
Just a quick update:

I made a trip out to a brick and mortar store and bought another drive. Same item, WD Black, 6 TB, 256 cache. Popped it into my system and it immediately mounted. I was able to initialize it with no hitch at all and have copied the 1TB of data from the old drive to it and used it lightly with no issue. I'll be hanging onto the old drive and not storing anything super important on the new drive for a little while just in case, but it looks like I really just did get 2 bad drives in a row. That, or my local UPS drivers just aren't careful enough with packages and managed to damage them.

Thanks for the help! I definitely feel better armed for the next hdd I swap in down the road.