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I found a 1.5TB drive that was used for backups (those drives have been upgraded to 2TB) that I thought might be good to use as a secondary drive.

I plugged it into a esata port and it seemed to work (couldn't do a real test as it was formatted to ext3 and this computer is running Windows XP) so I plugged it internally, but on boot it was not recognised. I found if I used a molex to sata power adapter it would work but not using the sata power connector itself. (I have an Antec EarthWatts 500W PSU: it should be enough, my graphics card only takes power from the motherboard)

However it took four days to do a slow format.

I found a testing program and it reported a read speed of 3.7MB/s:

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My other harddrives performed the same test at around 100MB/s:

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Is this drive stuffed or is there something else I could do?

EDIT: OK I think it is stuffed: Found this in Event Viewer (along with hundreds of "The device, \Device\Harddisk1\D, has a bad block."):

The driver has detected that device \Device\Harddisk1\DR1 has predicted that it will fail. Immediately back up your data and replace your hard disk drive. A failure may be imminent.

You could probably ignore this post now!

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  • What "stuffed hard drive" means?
    – Boris_yo
    May 3, 2011 at 21:38
  • @Boris_yo Stuffed is sometimes used to mean damaged, damaged beyond repair or in need of replacement. I believe that the word was used with one of those meanings in the edit.
    – AndrejaKo
    May 3, 2011 at 22:11
  • @Boris_yo: sorry about using slang. "Stuffed" is indeed similar to "broken" or "damaged beyond repair".
    – hood
    May 3, 2011 at 23:22
  • you should post your last edit as an answer
    – Sathyajith Bhat ♦
    May 4, 2011 at 9:10
  • I have a WD Green, so does my friend. Both of our drives are dying, and they are about the same age. SMART only shows FAIL/PRE-FAIL values, condition is 0%. The drives are still spinning, and the WD utility shows them 100% intact/perfect (while they are obviously not). Hence, we can't return them. So yeah. 2 dead WD Green, lying around without any use. (One 500gb and a 1TB drive.)
    – Apache
    May 4, 2011 at 9:19

2 Answers 2

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Sounds like you have your answer. Is the drive still under warranty? A quick check here should tell. If so, you may have a new one for little cost beyond shipping.

WD Warranty

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  • I've started the RMA process. I thought it'd be out of warranty but it was accepted! (Now to send it to Singapore...)
    – hood
    May 5, 2011 at 12:07
  • If you are lucky you may get a larger drive. It has happened to me a few times. Often not but when it does it is a nice bonus.
    – Dave M
    May 5, 2011 at 14:01
  • The cheapest postage I could get was $30 (without insurance, express, registered, etc), which seems a little high for something apparently worth $70. :-(
    – hood
    May 13, 2011 at 3:16
  • I got an email saying the replacement drive has been shipped and I should get it in a few days (shipping from Singapore to Australia). Judging by the product number (WD20EADS) I'm getting a 2TB! This whole ordeal has been relatively painless; I'd definitely buy and recommend WD again.
    – hood
    May 30, 2011 at 11:57
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You should get at least 60 Mb/S on a Caviar Green. Try defragging the drive, leaving at least 15% free (so 225 MB).

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  • It was newly formatted, so no files, so no fragmentation
    – hood
    May 3, 2011 at 23:19
  • Besides, that testing program performs low-level operations and is unaffected by anything on a filesystem.
    – hood
    May 3, 2011 at 23:23

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