Wd1001fals

[blasterboomer]

Hello everyone

I have 4 WD1001FALS drives and one WD5000AAKS all of which have a very strange problem.

all of the drives are detected etc, i cleaned them using diskpart, however all 5 of these disks make the occasional tick sound and are extremely slow (im talking like 1800ms to access a sector.

the SMART data looks good on them all with no errors, they are all also from iMac systems I believe.

are these drives completely useless now or is there some sort of fix?

Edit: added SMART screenshot

[stj]

Re: Wd1001fals

most wd drives can be ajusted for silent running vs speed,
that could be the issue - there is a utility at the wd website to ajust them.

[blasterboomer]

Re: Wd1001fals

I don't think thats the issue as i left one error scanning with HDTune Pro for about half an hour and it didnt even do 10MB

[stj]

Re: Wd1001fals

ask WD, maybe they have a firmware update - maybe apple put custom firmware in it to be bastards.

[ChaosLegionnaire]

Re: Wd1001fals

it looks like u are trying to connect these drives externally using a sata to usb adapter. connect the drives to the internal mobo sata ports and try again to rule out a faulty or incompatible sata to usb adapter.

[momaka]

Re: Wd1001fals

it looks like u are trying to connect these drives externally using a sata to usb adapter. connect the drives to the internal mobo sata ports and try again to rule out a faulty or incompatible sata to usb adapter.

Good call!

I've had external adapters act up too. SATA connector on mobo is indeed the safest route.

That aside, if the drives are still acting up, see if the PCB contacts for the head amp are corroded. I've revived WD drives with weird issues like this in the past (slow drive, lots of raw read/write errors or CRC errors, drive not detecting, and etc.) If the contacts do look corroded / dirty, clean with a pencil eraser, then wipe with IPA. Let dry for at least 5-10 minutes if IPA is not >95% pure.