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WD Green HDD

thinkpadmanthinkpadman
edited December 2016 in Hardware
My main desktop, an aging 5 year old machine was becoming increasingly unreliable and it appears to be from the 2TB WD Green HDD that was used as a secondary drive mostly for games and downloads. Windows 10 would occasionally crash and sometimes it would take a couple of resets to finally get the machine to boot up back to the desktop after Windows does recovery mode. Last night I realised that while the HDD was still detected in the BIOS, the drive wouldn't come up in Windows whatsoever. The drive wasn't sounding quite right so I was beginning to think all was lost on the drive. I then plugged it into another machine of similar age and to my surprise this PC has no issues - i.e. doesn't crash nor have trouble accessing any of the files. Both machines are running the anniversary update of Windows 10. While I'm still copying the data elsewhere just in case, it's almost as though the SATA port has gone bad on the motherboard. Without the HDD the main desktop runs fine. Nevertheless, this has been my second WD Green drive that's been a bit dicey, so sticking with Black and Red drives where it's definitely worthwhile spending the extra cash.

Main desktop specs:
Gigabyte H67A-UD3H-B3 motherboard
Intel i5-2500K CPU
16 GB DDR3
120 GB OCZ SSD
2 GB Gigabyte GTX 660

Other spare desktop:
ASUS P7H55D-M PRO motherboard
Intel i3-530 CPU
6 GB DDR3
60 GB OCZ SSD
1 GB Gigabyte GTS 450

Comments

  • pcgeekpcgeek
    Either a bad SATA port , some virus, who knows? Try wiping the BIOS config or even reinstalling Windows. Also, Windows 10 hates some older hardware (very similar to WinME, just much much less). If all else fails, take your PC to a repair shop.
  • SomeGuySomeGuy
    I'd check the SMART status of all hard drives involved and see if there are any warnings. I'd also refresh the contents by "dd"ing the disk back to itself.

    If there are any errors or warnings, it is probably time to retire the drive.
  • ibmpc5150ibmpc5150
    I also recommend to check Hard Disk Drive Starus by using CrystalDiskInfo

    *CrystalDiskInfo 7.0.4
    http://crystalmark.info/download/index-e.html

    You can see the status of HDD as (Blue <-- Good / Yellow <--- Caution / Red <-- Bad)
  • thinkpadmanthinkpadman
    ibmpc5150 wrote:
    I also recommend to check Hard Disk Drive Starus by using CrystalDiskInfo

    *CrystalDiskInfo 7.0.4
    http://crystalmark.info/download/index-e.html

    You can see the status of HDD as (Blue <-- Good / Yellow <--- Caution / Red <-- Bad)

    Thanks - I had Hard Disk Sentinel on my main desktop but that just wouldn't start up. I used this on the other PC and got these results. Looks normal for a used drive:

    Crystal_Disk_Info_2_TB_WD_Green.png

    Admittedly I haven't used "dd" as SomeGuy suggestion but I guess if I boot up Linux off a USB I can use it that way.
  • PCATPCAT
    I'm thinking it's your disk controller rater than the disk itself.

    Personally, I've had lots of bad luck concerning Western Digital drives (Many failed WD800s and many noisy WD200 / WD300 / WD400s, and a ruined WD1200 from the factory), but then again I seem to have bad luck with just about anything except the drives people hate the most (MiniScribe, IBM / Hitachi DeskStar and TravelStar, Maxtor, Micropolis, etc.) so that may not be the case.

    If you could do so, I recommend trying a different (known working) drive on the possibly dying SATA bus. It might even be worth a shot to check your power supply and cables, since that could also be causing issues.
  • ibmpc5150ibmpc5150
    In this case, HDD status seems not to be bad or no problem to use.

    I heard that first release of motherboard with H6x chip had a issue (problem) with SATA port in 2011.
  • thinkpadmanthinkpadman
    PCAT wrote:
    If you could do so, I recommend trying a different (known working) drive on the possibly dying SATA bus. It might even be worth a shot to check your power supply and cables, since that could also be causing issues.

    I ended up trying with a spare 80 GB Seagate Barracuda drive and tested OK between the spare SATA ports.

    After all that drama, it appeared to be just the SATA cable where the point of failure you'd think is least likely.
  • PCATPCAT
    thinkpadman wrote:
    PCAT wrote:
    If you could do so, I recommend trying a different (known working) drive on the possibly dying SATA bus. It might even be worth a shot to check your power supply and cables, since that could also be causing issues.

    I ended up trying with a spare 80 GB Seagate Barracuda drive and tested OK between the spare SATA ports.

    After all that drama, it appeared to be just the SATA cable where the point of failure you'd think is least likely.

    Did the drive or cable get moved around a lot? Sometimes that can happen.
  • jestjest
    thinkpadman wrote:
    Admittedly I haven't used "dd" as SomeGuy suggestion but I guess if I boot up Linux off a USB I can use it that way.
    sudo dd if=/dev/rdiskyerdsk of=/dev/rdiskyerdisk
    remember to umount it though
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