WD Elements HD - failed or not?

[QCassidy352]

Last fall, I bought a WD Elements 4TB hard drive to be my family's backup drive. I hooked it up to an older time capsule in bridge mode, and two Macs successfully did time machine back ups to it since then.

A few days ago, the light on the Time Capsule started flashing orange. Airport Utility said the drive hooked up to the TC needed repair. Neither Mac would back up to the drive, and the drive wouldn't mount on a Mac desktop. I was able to see the drive in the list in Disk Utility when hooked up via USB, but when I ran disk first aid, the drive failed, and disk first aid warned I should back up the data on the drive as soon as possible.

So I initiated a WD return process. In the meantime, I securely erased the drive though Disk Utility. Having finished the erase... now the drive works again. Mounts, passes disk repair, everything.

Any ideas what's going on? Does this sound like a hardware problem, or some software glitch that got cleared up by erasing the drive?

thank you!

 

[ght56]

It is going to be hard to say if this was hardware or software, but one thing you can do is check the drive health with this program. It's not free, but there is a free trial and it is able to read most drives. If it says something is failing, then you have your answer. If it shows everything is healthy, it suggests that it may be software (however, these drive statistics are not 100% at predicting failure, so there still would be some possibility it was hardware.) If nothing else, prior to sending the drive off, if it is hardware then you know it wasn't anything else that caused it?

 

[QCassidy352]

Good suggestion, thank you.

 

[Apple_Robert]

It is going to be hard to say if this was hardware or software, but one thing you can do is check the drive health with this program. It's not free, but there is a free trial and it is able to read most drives. If it says something is failing, then you have your answer. If it shows everything is healthy, it suggests that it may be software (however, these drive statistics are not 100% at predicting failure, so there still would be some possibility it was hardware.) If nothing else, prior to sending the drive off, if it is hardware then you know it wasn't anything else that caused it?

Thanks for the post. Have you tested this on a M1?

 

[ght56]

Thanks for the post. Have you tested this on a M1?

I have! They just released the fully compatible driver earlier this week.

SAT SMART Driver for Apple Silicon Macs

We released SAT SMART Driver for Apple Silicon Macs

binaryfruit.com

 

[Apple_Robert]

I have! They just released the fully compatible driver earlier this week.

SAT SMART Driver for Apple Silicon Macs

We released SAT SMART Driver for Apple Silicon Macs

binaryfruit.com

Thanks for the reply. I will do some more reading on their site. Before purchasing, I need to ascertain if said program can read networked drives. If so, it very well might be worth the price for me.

 

[Fishrrman]

I'm a neanderthal -- old fashioned.
(check my avatar, it was chosen for a reason)

My suggestion is that if you have two Macs, use TWO DRIVES for backup.
One for each Mac.

And don't use them "over a network".
Instead, connect each backup drive to each Mac.

Best practice is to connect to the Mac, do the backup, and then DISCONNECT until the next backup. This way, if files on the Mac got damaged, "the damage" wouldn't be communicated to the backup drives as well.

And consider trying either CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper.
Both are superior to time machine, and are less likely to fail on you in that "moment of extreme need"...

 

[ght56]

Thanks for the reply. I will do some more reading on their site. Before purchasing, I need to ascertain if said program can read networked drives. If so, it very well might be worth the price for me.

That might be worth reaching out to the developer(s) on as they've always been pretty responsive when I have had questions. I would guess that the specific enclosure and network specifics might impact it, and you might have to experiment with the free trial to see if/how well it works. If it does, IMO it's worth the price even though it isn't cheap. I've had it successfully predict several SSD failures and several HDD failures prior to the drives failing completely.

 

[Apple_Robert]

That might be worth reaching out to the developer(s) on as they've always been pretty responsive when I have had questions. I would guess that the specific enclosure and network specifics might impact it, and you might have to experiment with the free trial to see if/how well it works. If it does, IMO it's worth the price even though it isn't cheap. I've had it successfully predict several SSD failures and several HDD failures prior to the drives failing completely.

Thanks for the follow up. I installed the trial version this morning and will give it a go for the next 2 weeks.

 

[QCassidy352]

I'm a neanderthal -- old fashioned.
(check my avatar, it was chosen for a reason)

My suggestion is that if you have two Macs, use TWO DRIVES for backup.
One for each Mac.

And don't use them "over a network".
Instead, connect each backup drive to each Mac.

Best practice is to connect to the Mac, do the backup, and then DISCONNECT until the next backup. This way, if files on the Mac got damaged, "the damage" wouldn't be communicated to the backup drives as well.

And consider trying either CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper.
Both are superior to time machine, and are less likely to fail on you in that "moment of extreme need"...

I hear you, but our networked drive is only part of the backup plan (cloud storage, redundant devices). the simplicity works for us, even though I’m sure you’re right in a theoretical sense.