Is My Hard Drive Failing?

impoze on 14/10/2019 - 13:41

Hi all,

I have a 8TB WD Essentials & 10TB WD My Book which I use as back up drives that are mirrored to each other using carbon copy cloner.
Both purchased from Amazon US via Amazon AU.

Recently the 8TB Essentials has been playing up, it shows up in Mac Disk Utility but I'm unable to mount it.
It shows up but is greyed out

Looking up the warranty on WD, they now show up as 'out of region'.

Wondering if it is an early sign of drive failure? I did a full scan when I got the drives so no bad blocks.

thanks

Computing Computer Component Hard Drive

Comments

  • uzz30 on 14/10/2019 - 14:11
    +2

    Have you tried using WD Data Lifeguard Diagnostic for Windows to get a positive diagnostic result? (There ins't a Mac version sorry)

    https://support.wdc.com/downloads.aspx?p=3&lang=en

    Once you have evidence you might have to try to ask Amazon cover the warranty

    • impoze on 22/10/2019 - 11:10

      will give that a go now

  • ESEMCE on 14/10/2019 - 14:37
    +2

    It might be a sign of failure, or alternatively, just file system corruption, due to (for example) pulling the USB cord before correctly unmounting the drive.
    Definitely worth trying to reformat the drive and re-cloning from your other drive.

    • impoze on 22/10/2019 - 11:10

      hm ok, I'm always very pedantic about ejecting the drives, making sure they are completely off or finished spinning before unplugging.

  • Switchblade88 on 14/10/2019 - 14:46
    +1

    NEVER trust a data storage device, including SSDs! Very glad you're already set for backups though.

    I've got no experience with Macs so I can't offer any useful advice apart from 'wipe and recopy' which scubacoles already recommended.

  • [Deactivated] on 14/10/2019 - 15:21
    +1

    With WD you need to ship it to Vietnam for warranty if you are outside the 1 year back to the store warranty… Annoying.

    • impoze on 22/10/2019 - 11:11

      it's well within one year but because it was bought from AmazonUS via AmazonAU, it's saying it's out of region.

  • lint on 14/10/2019 - 15:32
    +1

    If the drive is showing up but the partition is greyed out in Disk Utility, there may be errors in the paritition table or file system. Try running Repair Disk in Disk Utility and see if it corrects any errors, or if it doesn't, what the error is.

    You may need third party software to recover the partition if Disk Utility can't repair it, otherwise if all content has been mirrored to another drive you can just wipe it and repartition.

    Errors could be caused by cutting power before the drive is properly unmounted or because the disk is failing. Usually if the disk is failing you'll experience issues with reading or writing to the drive as well.

  • salmon123 on 14/10/2019 - 15:55
    +1

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.M.A.R.T.

    You should be able to run those tests on your hard drive. Details of running the test vary by OS, so I can't list the specifics, but I'm sure you can google it.

    • impoze on 29/10/2019 - 00:44

      Smart results are all normal

      • salmon123 on 29/10/2019 - 01:15

        I'd be leaning towards a software issue then … either with the PC or the drive.

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