I have now purchased 2 WD Elements 3TB which exhibit the same behaviour.
These are both NEW drives. Fresh out of the box.
When I first get the drive, SMART shows this:
Short self-test routine recommended polling time: ( 2) minutes. Extended self-test routine recommended polling time: ( 7) minutes.
I then ran a short SMART test and a long SMART test, which comes back ok:
SMART Self-test log structure revision number 1 Num Test_Description Status Remaining LifeTime(hours) LBA_of_first_error # 1 Extended offline Completed without error 00% 0 - # 2 Short offline Completed without error 00% 0 -
Then, I ran a badblocks test which shows no bad blocks. (It writes, 0xaa, 0x55, 0xff, 0x00 to the disk from beginning to end and tests the result each time.)
Then, I ran another short self test, which also comes back ok:
SMART Self-test log structure revision number 1 Num Test_Description Status Remaining LifeTime(hours) LBA_of_first_error # 1 Short offline Completed without error 00% 261 - # 2 Extended offline Completed without error 00% 0 - # 3 Short offline Completed without error 00% 0 -
Then I ran a long SMART test again, and it gets stuck on 90%, even after 24 hours!
Self-test execution status: ( 249) Self-test routine in progress... 90% of test remaining.
At some point during this, the extended self-test routine time has extended from 7 minutes to 682 minutes!
Short self-test routine recommended polling time: ( 2) minutes. Extended self-test routine recommended polling time: ( 682) minutes.
I have returned one already thinking it was a fault, but now I’m thinking this could be a firmware issue.
Is there perhaps a firmware update to fix these drives?
Cheers,
Tudor.
