Question WD Black 4TB drives are either there or not there

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M

MM21

Sep 23, 2020
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Have had my system completed for a little over a month now, but keep having issues with my two hard drives.

A whole plethora of issues, might I add....my computer kept blue screening at one point until I completely disconnected my drives...my OS is on my m.2 lol and I had nothing on those drives at the time



Ever since I got the computer to post, I've been having issues with formatting the drives and getting them to read. Eventually was able to sort that out and had both formatted, named, and well...working.

But any time I launch the system now, good chance one or both of them aren't showing up. Maybe a couple restarts will get the other to pop, but not often.

I've gone through endless suggestions in other threads ranging from using different cables, uninstalling the problematic device in device manager (have done that for both several times up until this point, using different slots on the motherboard, and just reformatting everything again.


Haven't had much on those drives anyway so it's not too big of a problem just yet. I can't touch the problematic drive(s) in disk manager because of either an I/O issue or the "Device does not exist", two problems I bypassed when I first finished my build. However with that being said, when the drive is recognized later on either after rebooting or just using the computer, the files I have on said drive are still there and uncorrupted.


But I'm running out of space on my SSD and don't know what else to do with these drives. I don't have another computer readily available to further troubleshoot them which is an additional downside to having almost $400 worth of drives that work sometimes lol

Long story short, the drives are working and holding things just fine....just not recognized depending on the cycle of the moon I guess


I appreciate any and all help in advance :)

At the moment I have a Ryzen 9 3900x on an Asus ROG Crosshair VIII Hero motherboard (started the build with a 3950x, died on me so I sent it to AMD and bought the 3900x just to run the system, AMD sent a new 3950x but I have yet to reinstall it. After popping in the 3900x is when I had the blue screens)

And of course two Western Digital Black Performance 4TB 3.5 inch hard drives


Quick note: To my knowledge the drives have not been exposed to moisture or have been dropped, at least not while in my possession
 
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M

MM21

Sep 23, 2020
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Ralston18 said:
Update your post to include full system hardware specs and OS information.

Include PSU: make, model, wattage, age, condition.

Download and run WD's drive diagnostic software utility.

https://western-digital-data-lifeguard-diagnostics.en.lo4d.com/windows

Would not expect that two drives could have issues. No harm in eliminating that possibility.
Click to expand...
....of all the diagnostic programs I've tried I never once thought of one from the very company I got the product from lmfao

Had my drives unplugged fully for a bit, one seems to be recognized all the time for now


Started running the quick scan to see if anything would come up with that, got an error that says "Too many bad sectors" on the one drive, running an extended test right now

My bad on the late reply, haven't checked my email in a bit.

I have an EVGA Supernova 850 P2, bought brand new about 4 months ago or so
For GPU I have an Aorus 2080 super, just about everything is watercooled. RAM is GSkill trident Z 4x16 ddr4-3600 cl16


Edit: Again showing too many bad sectors. This drive is the one I never put files on

Another Edit: Tried erasing whatever's left on the drive from the program, got an error that says "Delete partions error"
 
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M

MM21

Sep 23, 2020
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Ralston18 said:
Post your drive extended test results.

Good chance that someone will be able to recognize or identify an error or problem.
Click to expand...

Finally got around to actually saving results both when the drive was recognized and not recognized

eMX0btI.png


Fu1wEvN.png
 
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M

MM21

Sep 23, 2020
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Ralston18 said:
Are you able to swap out/replace the "FAIL" drive - Unit Serial Number VBGA3WNR with a known working drive?
Click to expand...
Those are the only two drives I have.

Easily removable though

I have swapped the cables on them before and used entirely different cables and the same issue was present with just the one drive

Edit: Honestly I could probably alleviate the issue by just putting my computer in sleep mode when the drive is already being read but I'm not sure how much electricity mine would consume in that mode. With everything powered on it's drawing around 700-750 watts. I know our other old Dell computer would probably use about 10% of that in sleep mode, not sure if it'll be much different with this. RAM and MB alone are estimated at about 128 watts total
 
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Ralston18

Ralston18

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Oct 11, 2014
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For troubleshooting purposes, I would not be concerned about the power usage (watts) per se.

And it may be viable to just use sleep mode as an interim "fix". However, the problem is likely to grow and eventually lead to data loss or further problems.

Try running WD's diagnostic software multiple times: when computer is cold, warmed up, and after having been used for some amount of time.

Drive may be corrupted and all the more so with use.

Use DLG to identify the bad sectors.

Consider trying to repair them but only after all data is backed up and proven recoverable and readable.

Which you should be doing in any case.
 
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M

MM21

Sep 23, 2020
7
0
10
Ralston18 said:
For troubleshooting purposes, I would not be concerned about the power usage (watts) per se.

And it may be viable to just use sleep mode as an interim "fix". However, the problem is likely to grow and eventually lead to data loss or further problems.

Try running WD's diagnostic software multiple times: when computer is cold, warmed up, and after having been used for some amount of time.

Drive may be corrupted and all the more so with use.

Use DLG to identify the bad sectors.

Consider trying to repair them but only after all data is backed up and proven recoverable and readable.

Which you should be doing in any case.
Click to expand...
Will try tonight

As for the data, I don't really have anything of real use on the drives. Most of what I use, including my OS, is on my m.2 drive, so I can do without the drives or the data that's on one of them. The main problematic drive still doesn't have anything that I don't have somewhere else (recently moved a game file to it just to see if it'd run after a day, it did not, but the few videos and pictures I put on the drive read just fine)


Honestly at this point I'd be content with one drive working fine and just tossing in their other gold drive for mass storage, but I'll continue running tests in the meantime
 
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M

MM21

Sep 23, 2020
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0
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Ralston18 said:
Borrow a multimeter perhaps...

Try other known working drives - drives without bad sectors.

Determine if the drives become visible and remain so.

Not sure what else to suggest.
Click to expand...

A very very slight update

Have been very busy with work lately so haven't had much time to play around with the PC...however, my other drive went down a few days ago for a bit. That drive had some games from steam installed on it. The next time I booted the PC, the drive was appearing to read fine but those games now have to be reinstalled even though their full files are still present on the drive in the Steam Library folders. Meanwhile other files such as videos and pictures are opening just fine in programs.
.

This upcoming week I'll have a lot more time to run tests and maybe give another shot at just deleting and reformatting everything again, and I'll get around to getting a multimeter to test the PSU.

Now I don't know if I should even consider another drive at all if something else is the problem. Only options that seem to be left are trying different PSU's, MB's and drives..and neither are quick or cheap solutions lol

Edit: Was reinstalling some files while typing this up, seems it reinstalls fairly quickly what with all the necessary files already on the computer lol, first few minutes it seemed like a fresh install
Also, thanks to you and everyone else for your suggestions and especially your patience lol
 
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