I have a WDC RED (WD80EFAX-68LHPN0) that I installed in my HTPC about 1-2 months ago. I plugged it up, ran a smart & a short generic test and it passed both. I copied about 4 TB data to the 8TB drive. All was working fine, with any video playing flawlessly from the drive, and with speeds that are within the specs of the drive. The other day, videos started freezing/buffering for a few seconds then playing, only to repeat the process. I thought it was strange and thought maybe the PC needed rebooted. I rebooted and nothing improved. I tried videos from other drives (there are 7 of them) and no other drive has these issues. I check the smart and nothing is flagged. I check disk activity and its 0% when a video is not being played. When a video is played, activity shoots to 100%, and the read rate is in KB, rather than MB, and the video is frozen at this point. It then can jump to 125-150 MB/Second and the video starts playing. This can be for a few seconds, minutes etc, until shooting back down to KBs/Second and the video freezing again. Its not at the same part in a particular video, so it doesn't seem like a specific sector is bad. It also doesn't have any pattern to how long or when, it will read slowly. I tried writing to the drive, this seems to work fine. I tried copying 100 GB from the drive to another, and it started in the KB/Second for a minute or two, then shot up to ~150MB/Second for about 15-20GB. It then when back down to KBs/Second for 3-5 minutes, then shot back up ... it ended up taking close to 30 minutes to copy 100GB to another internal drive because of this behavior. Even though it is a WD, I ran a SeaTools Short Generic and it failed. I ran it again, and it passed. I then tried a long Generic and it failed after about 45 minutes. I am now using WD's utility and when it started ... it was stopping at each sector for 30 seconds or longer (reading very slowly), and reported 1000's of hours to complete the test. After 3 minutes of this, the speed shot up and I can see the tested sectors rolling by in a blur. After a bit of this, back to slow reads, then it sped up again. The WD Extended test is still running and I'd be surprised if it completes, or if it does, if it doesn't take 2+ days. I don't hear anything crazy, but there is an occasional soft click noise. It is not constant though ... Id say I hear a click every 30 seconds to 2 minutes.
Am I missing something obvious or does anyone have any thoughts on this? It is under Warranty, but I am worried WD would test it quickly and because of these weird speed issues, it may just happen to work for the quick diagnostic they do, and then they send it back to me. Also, does anyone know if they send a new drive or a Refurbed one ... really don't want a refurb for a drive that is only about 45 days old. Any help is greatly appreciated!
Am I missing something obvious or does anyone have any thoughts on this? It is under Warranty, but I am worried WD would test it quickly and because of these weird speed issues, it may just happen to work for the quick diagnostic they do, and then they send it back to me. Also, does anyone know if they send a new drive or a Refurbed one ... really don't want a refurb for a drive that is only about 45 days old. Any help is greatly appreciated!
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