Jim Cockfield wrote:
But, that's not even the main issue (although I suspect the excessive load cycles contribute to the drive problems with WD Green Models). Sector Read errors inside of a year of use is the issue I've had with them, even though SMART data showed the firmware hadn't reallocated any bad sectors to spares (leaving them in a "pending reallocation" state instead.
IMO, that's horrible behavior, since users may not realize their disk drive is what's causing their issues until they lose important data.
Example (SMART info from the last one I had problems with after only 233 days of power on time). It had not reallocated any sectors to spares (leaving 64 of them in "pending reallocation" state), and couldn't even get past 10% of short self tests without read failures:
== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Model Family: Western Digital AV-GP family
Device Model: WDC WD15EVDS-73V9B0
Serial Number: WD-WMAVU2482427
Firmware Version: 01.00A01
User Capacity: 1,500,301,910,016 bytes
Device is: In smartctl database [for details use: -P show]
ATA Version is: 8
ATA Standard is: Exact ATA specification draft version not indicated
Local Time is: Wed May 1 15:13:19 2013 EDT
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled
=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED
General SMART Values:
Offline data collection status: (0x84) Offline data collection activity
was suspended by an interrupting command from host.
Auto Offline Data Collection: Enabled.
Self-test execution status: ( 121) The previous self-test completed having
the read element of the test failed.
Total time to complete Offline
data collection: (35400) seconds.
Offline data collection
capabilities: (0x7b) SMART execute Offline immediate.
Auto Offline data collection on/off support.
Suspend Offline collection upon new
command.
Offline surface scan supported.
Self-test supported.
Conveyance Self-test supported.
Selective Self-test supported.
SMART capabilities: (0x0003) Saves SMART data before entering
power-saving mode.
Supports SMART auto save timer.
Error logging capability: (0x01) Error logging supported.
General Purpose Logging supported.
Short self-test routine
recommended polling time: ( 2) minutes.
Extended self-test routine
recommended polling time: ( 255) minutes.
Conveyance self-test routine
recommended polling time: ( 5) minutes.
SCT capabilities: (0x303f) SCT Status supported.
SCT Error Recovery Control supported.
SCT Feature Control supported.
SCT Data Table supported.
SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 16
Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME FLAG VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE UPDATED WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate 0x002f 200 200 051 Pre-fail Always - 0
3 Spin_Up_Time 0x0027 214 186 021 Pre-fail Always - 4275
4 Start_Stop_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 50
5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct 0x0033 200 200 140 Pre-fail Always - 0
7 Seek_Error_Rate 0x002e 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0
9 Power_On_Hours 0x0032 093 093 000 Old_age Always - 5662
10 Spin_Retry_Count 0x0032 100 253 000 Old_age Always - 0
11 Calibration_Retry_Count 0x0032 100 253 000 Old_age Always - 0
12 Power_Cycle_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 38
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 19
193 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0032 141 141 000 Old_age Always - 179657
194 Temperature_Celsius 0x0022 113 108 000 Old_age Always - 37
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0
197 Current_Pending_Sector 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 64
198 Offline_Uncorrectable 0x0030 200 200 000 Old_age Offline - 17
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0
200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate 0x0008 199 199 000 Old_age Offline - 261
SMART Error Log Version: 1
No Errors Logged
SMART Self-test log structure revision number 1
Num Test_Description Status Remaining LifeTime(hours) LBA_of_first_error
# 1 Short offline Completed: read failure 90% 5610 1435135086
# 2 Short offline Completed: read failure 90% 5596 1435131440
# 3 Short offline Completed: read failure 90% 5595 1339288601