I got a 3TB WD Red late December 2013 and it has been fine up until about a week ago. Whenever the drive is accessed it makes a noticeable vibrating/grinding sound that I have never heard before. As the drive is used for my browsers cache it is accessed quite frequently and the sound gets a bit annoying. The drive is mounted using the rubber grommets in my Fractal R4 so I don't think it is just the case amplifying the sound. According to CrystalDiskInfo the drive has a good health status. The current power on hours are 4836 and the raw LCC value is 47443. The LCC is not massively high which can quite often be the case with WD Reds from what I have read. Is my drive dying or am I just getting paranoid?
Do a backup. It might not be dying, but if you have important data on there that's not backed up then it will die. Generally when harddrives start making noises that's a bad sign, but sometimes they'll soldier on for years grinding away. There's no easy way to tell, so just be ready for it to fail, ie BACKUP!
Unfortunately it is my backup drive and I have nothing else to back up onto. Is it only worth trying to RMA it if it actually dies?
I know this is an old school approach (think 1970s) but one drive does not a back up make. A proper back up solution can handle a drive failing. Buy a new drive, back up your back up, and keep one of the back ups off line. Swap the drives out every time you back up so the most recent is always off site....well, just not connected to the computer. I'm always surprised how everyone is so quick to not learn or forget proper back up plans as hard drives get bigger and SSDs become more main stream.
does anyone know if this is a common problem with 3TB HDD's? I was planning on getting a 3TB WD caviar green as a media drive to accommodate a 180GB SSD for my OS, recording software and a couple of my favorite games.
Most data on most (personal) hard drives is replaceable and not worth the expense of backing up. Only work related stuff and pictures are really worth the effort. I also back-up my music collection and game saves. Doesn't require much time, effort or money. And even if I did lose it all it wouldn't be the end of the world, it's just stuff after all. Probably why most people don't bother.
I understand that having a backup of my backup is sensible, but at the moment I don't really want to buy another 3TB HDD. Surely the postage to and from WD is not going to be anywhere near the £100 I paid for the drive though?
Look at it this way: You have drive A, which in your system now. You have drive B, which is your maybe-failing back up drive. If you RMA drive B and you get hit by lightning, have a house flood, or God just hates you and drive A gets fried; then you have lost both A and B. or at least you will be getting a blank drive back and still have lost everything. Buy drive C. back up to drive C. RMA drive B, and keep drive C away from drive A. When you get drive B back, then you have B and C to start a sensible yet simple back up. Or use a cloud back up. or a RAID box. or a NAS. But 100 bux, quid, euro is nothing for 3Tb. I paid $1000 for the first 1Gb drive, so let that be some perspective on how cheap the extra insurance for your data really is. If you're ok with losing all your data, then take the risk. I have been doing this or some variation of this since 5.25" floppys. As drives get bigger and you fill them with more of the minutia of life, the risk of losing everything gets larger. So a robust back up solution is even more important.
where did you buy it from as your contract is with them not the manufacturer, its less than 1 year old therefore you can send it back to the retailer to deal with
I have got two 3TB red drives and they run fine. I believe I bought them last year. I would back up all the important files on a separate drive, it does not have to be a 3TB drive unless all the data is important.
I bought the drive from Scan. Will I potentially be able to RMA it with them? Luckily my Dad just bought a new 2TB HDD so I can backup onto that we he gets it. Unfortunately, over the last week the sounds have seemed to be getting worse and more frequent, so shall I try and RMA with Scan?
I find modern WD drives to be pretty terrible for failing. Fairly sure they reduced all the standard warranties a few years ago, seemed to be around the time the drives started sucking for me!
each to their own ive got a WD 2TB green drive in a media PC which has been running for 3 years with no issues. Ive also had the the WD older blue 640GB and they ran for over 5 years (replaced didnt fail)
Turns out I actually bought it from Amazon, getting mixed up with all the stuff I bought last year. I guess I will have to go through WD warranty now as I doubt Amazon will be very helpful?
Is it worth trying the advance RMA and if they decide to charge me, will it be some ridiculous amount?
I disagree with that. I back up to my RAID server, which is on 24/7. Proper back up has a back up of the back up! I have a back up drive in the machine itself, which is then mirrored to a RAID6 server, which is in turn mirrored to a RAID5 NAS. I'd need 5 simultaneous drive failures to lose data. The NAS is also in another building to mitigate against fire and theft. THAT'S back up.
