Should I RMA this HDD?

[Helios-vmg]

I have a 4 TB WD Caviar Red (WD40EFRX) that keeps misbehaving. It's not even two years old, but it's already failed at least one self-test
Num Test_Description Status Remaining LifeTime(hours) LBA_of_first_error
# 1 Short offline Completed: read failure 90% 13930 815329496
and the Current_Pending_Sector value keeps oscillating between 0 and 1. I actually saw Reallocated_Event_Count increase to 1 and then decrease back to 0.

Is behavior like this covered by the warranty, or do I need to wait until it completely fails?
Thanks.

 

[drtweak]

download Crystal disk info in my signature and run it. Then just copy and paste what it says here

 

[D_Know_WD]

Hi there Helios-vmg,

Sorry that you are facing some issues with your WD drive.
I believe the best thing you can do is to just back up the data stored on the drive.
After that, you can test the drive with the tool that drtweak has already suggested. It may be a good idea to run both short and extended DLG tests as well: http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=lHhWVS

If any of those tests show that there is something wrong with the drive, you can contact the place you got it from or WD's Support and RMA the drive: http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=LE9AIT

Let us know how this goes,
D_Know_WD

 

[Helios-vmg]

Thanks for your answers.

I have the drive connected to my router, so I can't run any Windows utilities on it, but I can post the output from smartctl: http://pastebin.com/g5vrKeLA
When I had it connected to my desktop and I ran Crystal Disk Info, it returned "caution" because of the non-zero value of Current_Pending_Sector.

I've already ran the all the tests in the WinDlg program. The long test has failed at least once; I can't remember ATM if it fails every time or only some times. The SMART data from the same utility just says "PASS" for everything, even though it shows the same values as smartctl and Crystal Disk Info.
I've also tried zero-filling the drive and doing a full NTFS format, but the value of Current_Pending_Sector didn't go down like it should.

 

[drtweak]

Yea if there is anything in Current Pending Sector then it the drive is starting to fail. I would RMA it

 

[Helios-vmg]

Alright, thanks. I've already started the RMA process. Turns out WD has an office a few blocks away from my workplace.