Strange Behavior on a WD Red Plus

[bakayuki]

Hello,

I've recently completed a build based on an X11SSM-F, Xeon E3-1230v6, 36GB of RAM, and 6 WD Reds (3 Pros/3 Plus) inside a fractal node 804. Cooling is provided by Noctua IndustrialPPC fans. The drives I got are admittedly second hand, but most of them are either still under WD's warranty or are under a warranty through the seller I got them from. The others are cheap enough that if they do end up failing I'm not out too much more to turn around and buy new. (Drives are expensive here.)

One drive in particular, a WD Red Plus (wd60efrx-68mymn1) is acting very strange. I received the drive, ran a SMART short test and long test, both passed. Then I started a run with badblocks (badblocks -wsv -b 4096 -c 1024) and it hit a small section of the drive where it encountered 95 read errors. SMART then reported those sectors as pending reallocation. SMART Long test fails. I used dd to write zeros to those sectors, and the pending sector counter decreased without an increase in reallocated sector count. SMART Long test passes.

I was using a second (older, without ECC memory, without an Intel controller) system to test the drive, so I thought that might be the cause of the strange behavior. I put the drive into the fully assembled system, and observed the same "unstable" behavior in the exact same sectors. SMART reports UNC errors, but when writing to the sectors with dd or starting a new badblocks run, they seemingly go away.

Has anyone seen this before? This drive is warrantied through the seller so I've reached out to them about starting a return, but I'd like to make sure nothing is flakey on my system. It passed a 24 hour memtest with no errors, I tested the power supply, and I've switched cables. The drives are running at about 35C. I've attached a picture of what's in the SMART logs, but I'm putting it through badblocks again just out of curiosity.

Thank you for your time.

 

[Davvo]

Please post the output of the latest long test you have (using the appropriate tags).
Passing doesn't mean the drive is necessarily in good condition.

It doesn't sound operational-worthy however. Drive is likely to be bad.

As a side note, you want to run memtest for at the very least a couple of days.

 

[bakayuki]

Thanks for your response, here's the output of smartctl -a

Code:

smartctl 7.3 2022-02-28 r5338 [x86_64-linux-6.0.7-301.fc37.x86_64] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-22, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Model Family:     Western Digital Red
Device Model:     WDC WD60EFRX-68MYMN1
Serial Number:    WD-WX21D84R178K
LU WWN Device Id: 5 0014ee 26094e61a
Firmware Version: 82.00A82
User Capacity:    6,001,175,126,016 bytes [6.00 TB]
Sector Sizes:     512 bytes logical, 4096 bytes physical
Rotation Rate:    5700 rpm
Device is:        In smartctl database 7.3/5319
ATA Version is:   ACS-2, ACS-3 T13/2161-D revision 3b
SATA Version is:  SATA 3.1, 6.0 Gb/s (current: 6.0 Gb/s)
Local Time is:    Sun Dec 25 20:38:33 2022 CET
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:  (0x00)    Offline data collection activity
                    was never started.
                    Auto Offline Data Collection: Disabled.
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:         ( 6524) 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:      ( 719) minutes.
Conveyance self-test routine
recommended polling time:      (   5) minutes.
SCT capabilities:            (0x303d)    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   186   051    Pre-fail  Always       -       7
  3 Spin_Up_Time            0x0027   213   197   021    Pre-fail  Always       -       8325
  4 Start_Stop_Count        0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       14
  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   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       68
 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       -       13
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       6
193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       30
194 Temperature_Celsius     0x0022   116   116   000    Old_age   Always       -       36
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
198 Offline_Uncorrectable   0x0030   100   253   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count    0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate   0x0008   200   200   000    Old_age   Offline      -       1

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  Extended offline    Completed: read failure       90%        64         326400288
# 2  Extended offline    Completed without error       00%        13         -
# 3  Short captive       Interrupted (host reset)      80%         0         -
# 4  Short offline       Completed without error       00%         0         -

SMART Selective self-test log data structure revision number 1
 SPAN  MIN_LBA  MAX_LBA  CURRENT_TEST_STATUS
    1        0        0  Not_testing
    2        0        0  Not_testing
    3        0        0  Not_testing
    4        0        0  Not_testing
    5        0        0  Not_testing
Selective self-test flags (0x0):
  After scanning selected spans, do NOT read-scan remainder of disk.
If Selective self-test is pending on power-up, resume after 0 minute delay.

and then I posted the whole log output into a pastebin. I hope this is what is needed?

for the memtest, my idea was to just get a benchmark before moving on to test the drives so i can send them in for warranty work if needed. I'm planning to run memtest and a cpu stress test over again at the end of the drive testing process, probably for a couple more days.

Thank you again for your help.

 

[Ericloewe]

Completed: read failure

That's all you need to know. RMA it.

 

[bakayuki]

Will do. Thank you very much for the assistance.

 

[Davvo]

I would also suggest to run a conveyance test as the first step after pulling the drive out of the shipment.

 

[winnielinnie]

Western Digital Red Plus drives don't support conveyance tests. (Not sure why.)

Code:

smartctl -t conveyance /dev/ada0

smartctl 7.2 2021-09-14 r5236 [FreeBSD 13.1-RELEASE-p2 amd64] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-20, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org

=== START OF OFFLINE IMMEDIATE AND SELF-TEST SECTION ===
Conveyance Self-test functions not supported

 

[Davvo]

Western Digital Red Plus drives don't support conveyance tests. (Not sure why.)

Darn, didn't know that.
Do you known if it's the same for enterprise drives too?

 

[winnielinnie]

Do you known if it's the same for enterprise drives too?

Not sure about retail enterprise drives, per se, but the ones I shucked from external enclosures (all white labels, some of which were He-filled) also blurted out they don't support "Conveyance" tests. ("Short" and "extended" tests only.)