I have a WD Purple 4TB initialized GPT and intended as data drive only (no boot). Initialized and formatted fine and assigned a drive letter. Shows up correctly in UEFI and in Disk Manager. On initial boot shows up in Windows 7 Computer and Disk Manager.

After trying to write data to it, it will accept about 30 meg and then will give error. At this point it disappears from Win Computer. Doing a re-boot will bring it back, only to repeat disappearing when trying to write to it.

I've tried using another SATA cable, reseating the cable multiple times, and changing the SATA port on the MB with no luck.


Did I just get a bad drive??

I would examine its SMART report with a tool such as CrystalDiskInfo.

http://crystalmark.info/software/Crysta ... dex-e.html

Then try reducing the SATA link rate via the drive's OPT1 jumper.

http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/library/o ... 001037.pdf

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

thank you, I will try both. Hope I can understand the report.

How about Western Digital's Data LifeGuard Diagnostics. any good for this?

DLG does not report the raw values of the SMART attributes. If you choose to use it (for surface testing), I would suggest that you use the DOS version rather than the Windows version.

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

The Windows WD DLT quick test hangs up at 2 min and will not proceed. I also used it to try to write zeros to all sectors and it fails at sector 312832 and will go no further.

Crystal Disk reports "caution" on the health of the drive and there is a yellow symbol at current pending sector count.

I tried a clean all with Diskpart but get the error "encountered an error - cannot find the file specified".

This drive is 2 weeks old and unless I'm missing something routine in in initializing and installing it, I feel it might be time to send the drive back for a new one. Bought lots of HD's and this is the first one I've ever had a minutes worth of trouble with.