Hey,

 

I just had three drives pop up a 1 or 2 Current pending sectors per drive. One was just RMA'ed as well, so annoyed.

 

The model is WDC WD40EFRX-68WT0N0. I am running a 3 pass preclear on these drives.

 

I'm going to RMA these yet again, but how are peoples RED drives here going? 

 

 

A lot of times it feels like you are inheriting singe else's problems, because the drives appear just fine to the drive manufacturer's diagnostics. (I can promise you they are not running a 2-3 day test per drive!)

 

But fortunately a lot of users return perfectly good disks that they thought were bad because of other issues. Those are the drives you want! Those or new drives that they are sending out because they have no refurbs in inventory.

 

Unfortunately all the SMART attributes are reset on RMAs and you have no clue what issues the prior owner had.

 

REDs are popular and lots of users have good experiences. I personally prefer the HGST drives that generally have lower failure rates, at least in BackBlaze studies.

 

Returns are pretty rare these days due to the shortened warranty periods. I haven't had one in years. It is best to preclear a disk and return it to the seller for a new replacement rather than have to RMA one, but obviously that's not something you can choose.

 

Good luck. Hope round.2 goes better! 

 

 

Thanks bjp999, lets see how this goes. In the mean time, WD can replace the three drives. Actually I have 16, so 3 out of 16 is not too bad I guess. 

 

20% - I'd call that bad! 

 

Good ones have low single digit failure rates. 2.5%, I'd call that excellent. (That's over the course of a year.)

 

Where did you get these drives? Sometimes the bulk drives wrapped in bubble wrap that bang around in a cardboard box in shipping are not the manufacturers.fault for high failure rates. I actually prefer the external drives to those, because if nothing else, all the factory packaging and the shock resistant case are certainly good for protecting the drive from shipping damage! 

Since the Red are often OEM where did you buy them?  I won't buy an OEM drive from NewEgg.  Had same problem with WD Green when I RMA'd to NewEgg.  Finally RMA'd to WD directly and they were fine.  Refurbished but OK.

Hey, I bought them a Local reseller here in Australia. Ones managed to self correct, the others Ill have to RMA.

 

Thats what I love about this product, its not just about storing all your data, its about the integrity of your data. And a community that helps!

Edited August 16, 20178 yr by riff.79

All 3 of my 5TB Reds died.  RMA'ed them along with a bundle of 4TB Blues, WD sent me a heap of 4TB Blues to replace the Reds.  After 4 months of fuss and bother, they were eventually able to replace the 5TB Reds with refurbed 5TB Purples.

 

Up until recently, WD drives have been excellent for me.  Now, not so much.  The botched RMA procedure has put me off buying WD again.

I have six 3Tb Reds that have seen light but consistent use for just under three years. All six passed the initial preclear and have still got perfect SMART reports (I checked yesterday actually because I am about to move them to another build). They were bought from a major computer retailer in the UK and were in individual shock packages.