WD Red 3 TB, appears as 2 TB

[danb35]

Building up a new FreeNAS machine using a SuperMicro MBD-X9SCL-F, current BIOS. Right now it has 2x WD Red 3 TB drives installed. However, one of them is showing up as 2 TB capacity, not 3 TB. This persists if I swap cables and motherboard SATA ports. SMART data for the apparently-defective drive follows:

Code:

smartctl 6.2 2013-07-26 r3841 [FreeBSD 9.2-RELEASE-p4 amd64] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-13, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org
 
=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Model Family:    Western Digital Red (AF)
Device Model:    WDC WD30EFRX-68EUZN0
Serial Number:    WD-WCC4N0xxxxxx
LU WWN Device Id: 5 0014ee 20a0a55a4
Firmware Version: 80.00A80
User Capacity:    2,000,421,444,608 bytes [2.00 TB]
Sector Sizes:    512 bytes logical, 4096 bytes physical
Rotation Rate:    5400 rpm
Device is:        In smartctl database [for details use: -P show]
ATA Version is:  ACS-2 (minor revision not indicated)
SATA Version is:  SATA 3.0, 6.0 Gb/s (current: 3.0 Gb/s)
Local Time is:    Sat May 24 17:10:33 2014 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:  (0x00)    Offline data collection activity
                    was never started.
                    Auto Offline Data Collection: Disabled.
Self-test execution status:      (  0)    The previous self-test routine completed
                    without error or no self-test has ever
                    been run.
Total time to complete Offline
data collection:        (40380) 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:      ( 405) minutes.
Conveyance self-test routine
recommended polling time:      (  5) minutes.
SCT capabilities:            (0x703d)    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  100  253  051    Pre-fail  Always      -      0
  3 Spin_Up_Time            0x0027  179  179  021    Pre-fail  Always      -      6016
  4 Start_Stop_Count        0x0032  100  100  000    Old_age  Always      -      7
  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      -      13
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      -      7
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032  200  200  000    Old_age  Always      -      4
193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032  200  200  000    Old_age  Always      -      6
194 Temperature_Celsius    0x0022  120  114  000    Old_age  Always      -      30
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      -      0
 
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  Conveyance offline  Completed without error      00%        10        -
# 2  Extended offline    Completed without error      00%        7        -
# 3  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.

Both drives were purchased new, and neither has been used in any other system other than having the SMART self-tests run while connected to a different system. I'm thinking the drive is defective and needs to be replaced--is there any other possibility I'm missing?

 

[cyberjock]

The drive is probably defective. Check the serial number against what the label says and see if they match. Then try to do an RMA.

 

[danb35]

Two out of three drives doing this--very strange. I'll RMA them. Amazon will cross-ship, and they pay for return shipping.

 

[joeschmuck]

Damn, Okay. I took back my last message. I'd tell Amazon that they look to be counterfeit drives. As Cyberjock said, check the serial number against the WD warranty site to see what shakes from the trees.

 

[danb35]

The SMART data (see line 10, quoted in the OP, for the first drive; I can give the same for the second drive, but it looks the same) and the FreeNAS web GUI both show the capacity of two of the drives as 2 TB. The third drive is shown as 3 TB in both places. The drives are in a hot-swap cage, so I swapped the known-good drive (that's showing as 3 TB) with one of the questionable (reporting as 2 TB) units, and the issue followed the drive. That, to me, rules out an issue with the motherboard SATA ports, cables, or backplane.
Where else should I look?

 

[joeschmuck]

Updated my posting when I saw the errors of my ways.

 

[danb35]

WD's warranty check site accepts both serial numbers and reports them both as WD Red 3 TB drives.

 

[joeschmuck]

That is perplexing. You have three drives, one reads correct and the other two do not. Very odd. I'd send them back to Amazon if possible that way you obtain new drives, hopefully the correct ones.

 

[danb35]

I thought it strange as well. If they'd all done it, I could have believed it was some kind of BIOS limitation or something (but then the question would be how to get FreeBSD/FreeNAS to see the true capacity), but one of them is showing the expected value. I've put in the return with Amazon, they're cross-shipping new drives and sending a UPS driver to pick up the old ones. Can't complain about the service--but a 66% DOA rate doesn't seem too good.

 

[joeschmuck]

I think it's some illegal activity myself. Or a serious screw up for WD. I guess the only other thing you could check is to see if they format to a full 3TB in a windows machine or you could use Gpart just to verify it, not that it matters now.

 

[solarisguy]

You are not alone http://www.amazon.com/review/R1GP1S1W5DD9O6/

However, one last question... Were these disks used by you at first in a system that was not using AHCI ? I am assuming that you got your disks factory packaged and sealed...

 

[danb35]

I believe the drives were factory sealed and packaged--they were sealed in silver anti-static bags with a WD Red sticker on each. I ran the SMART tests on a different system than my new FreeNAS server, but I believe it supports AHCI. In any event, I installed all three drives into that system for testing, and ran the same tests on each of them.

Interesting to see that review--he'd bought 4 TB drives which reported as 3 TB, whereas I bought 3 TB drives that showed up as 2 TB, but still strange to see the same basic issue. At least, as you said, I'm not alone. WD's reported response is troubling, however.

 

[danb35]

Received the replacement drives the other day, and just got them plugged in to test them. They're temporarily installed in a Linux machine, not my FreeNAS server, but the Linux box uses the same motherboard. SMART does report them as 3 TB capacity, which seems like a good start.

 

[solarisguy]

Good news! Last time S.M.A.R.T. had them as 2TB.

I hope that Amazon returns them to WD, so they can find the defect(s) in their process(es). May be you can report it too, using the serial number (feel like performing a community service that benefits all of us :) ).

 

[joeschmuck]

Glad you have it resolved. It really sucks that you had to go through it. Imagine how many people don't even realize right away that they have the wrong capacity drive.