Western Digital Smart Tool

[Chadwick Bosse]

Questionsseeking product, service, or learning material recommendations are off-topic because they become outdated quickly and attract opinion-based answers. Instead, describe your situation and the specific problem you're trying to solve. Share your research. Here are a few suggestions on how to properly ask this type of question.

Your best bet for getting the health status from the drive over USB from a generic tool is smartctl from smartmontools. A version that works on Windows with a nice GUI is available here. If this does not work, you will have to download and install the device specific management tool from the manufacturer. The management tool will have a health checker for the drive. Here is the site for western digital. Here is the site for Seagate. You could also take out the drive from the external enclosure and hook it up to your PC directly using SATA or IDE and then read the status using standard tools like HDTune or Smartctl.

Give HDDScan a try. It does SMART value reporting from ATA/SATA/USB/FireWire and analyzes log pages from SCSI drives. It can also perform SMART tests on hard drives connected by any of the above-mentioned interfaces.

At Backblaze, we have over a dozen different SSD models in service, and we pull daily SMART stats from each. To simplify the task at hand for the purposes of this blog post, we chose three SSD models, one each from Seagate, Western Digital, and Crucial, to show the similarities and differences between the models. All three are 250GB SSDs.

To that end, we have created a table of the SMART attributes used by each of those three drive models. You can download a PDF of the table, or jump to the end of this post to view the table. Things to note about the table:

Making things more complicated, manufacturers differ widely in how they advertise the attributes and definitions they use. Kingston, for example, is very good about publishing a table of named SMART attributes and definitions for each of their drives, whereas similar information for Western Digital SSDs is difficult to find in the public domain. The net result is that agnostic SMART tools such as smartctl, DriveDx, and others have to work extra hard to keep up with new, updated, and deleted attributes.

All three use program/erase cycles (SMART 232) and available reserved blocks (SMART 170) to compute their percentages, although as is seen, SMART 202 counts up, while the other two count down. Lifetime, as defined here, is relative. That is you could be at 50% lifetime after six months or six years depending on the SSD usage.

In an SSD, data is written to and read from a page, also known as a NAND page. A group of pages forms a block. The LBA written/read count is just that, a count of blocks written/read. Each time a block is written or read the respective SMART attribute counter increases by one. For example, if various pieces of data on the pages within a single block are read 10 times, it will increase the SMART counter by 10.

Crucial also counts NAND pages written due to a computer request (SMART 247) and NAND pages written due to a background operation such as garbage collection (SMART 248). Crucial does not seem to have a SMART attribute for total count of LBAs read. Nor does it seem to record LBAs written for background operations.

Many of us have an external hard drive or two sitting on a shelf somewhere acting as a backup or perhaps even an archive of our data. Every so often, we take out one of those drives, plug it in, and hope it spins up. This can go on for years.

This begs the question: How worn out is your SSD? For Crucial SSDs, the answer is SMART 202: Percentage Lifetime Used. We discussed this attribute earlier in relation to drive life, but it also plays a role in data retention when the drive is unpowered. Using the normalized value, Crucial estimates the following:

I installed Rapid Storage Technology from the motherboard CDROM to solve a problem with wiping (secure erase) a 530 SSD. It fixed the problem, but then I started WD's Lifeguard to verify SMART status of my hard drives. Before RST, all drives, even Intel SSDs, would display SMART status. But after RST, SMART status was replaced by a question mark. I just uninstalled RST and re-verified SMART status via Lifeguard, and all drives report a checkmark as they did before RST.

Okay, I guess I did not explain myself very well. This is a system without RAID storage. All it has is an internal 530 used as a system drive and an internal WD Black used for data files. Both are connected via SATA cables to the motherboard. That's why I was confused.

Note that some versions of RST driver even supports SMART access for drives in a RAID configuration via CSMI (Common Storage Management Interface). Unfortunately Intel does not document which RST versions provide this functionality.

I can confirm that "Intel SSD Toolbox" ver.3.2.0 does retrieve and display S.M.A.R.T. data for drives in an on-board RAID. The newer version of "Intel SSD Toolbox" does NOT retrieve and display it. I realized that when the newer version was installed by an automatic updater on my computer, so I had to restore the version 3.2.0 from another computer. Another free utility that retrieves and displays S.M.A.R.T. data for drives in a RAID is CrystalDiskInfo.

Another free tool supporting CSMI is smartctl (with optional GUI frontends GSmartControl or HDD Guardian). In above configuration, all functions of smartctl work with the HDDs and SSD (SMART attributes, Self-test logs, Error logs, Device Statistics log, SATA Phy log, Temperature log, run Self-tests, configure AAM/APM/ERC/WCache, ...)

Intel does not verify all solutions, including but not limited to any file transfers that may appear in this community. Accordingly, Intel disclaims all express and implied warranties, including without limitation, the implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement, as well as any warranty arising from course of performance, course of dealing, or usage in trade.

Idle3-tools provides a linux/unix utility thatcan disable, get and set the value of the infamous idle3 timer foundon recent Western Digital Hard Disk Drives.

It can be usedas an alternative to the official wdidle3.exe proprietary utility,without the need to reboot in a DOS environement.

A power off/on cycle of the drive will still be mandatory for new settings to be taken into account.

Idle3-toolsis an independant project, unrelated in any way toWestern Digital Corp.

Modern Western Digital "Green" Drives include the Intellipark feature that stops the disk when not in use.

Unfortunately, the default timer setting is not perfect on linux/unix systems, including many NAS, and leads to a dramatic increase of the Load Cycle Count value (SMART attribute #193).

If you have a Western Digital EADS or EARS drive, please check you SMART information before it's too late :$ sudo smartctl -A /dev/sda grep "^193"193 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0032 253 253 000 Old_age Always - 14493If the Load cycle count exceeds 1000, you're probably affected by the idle3 timer problem.

Idle3ctl should be compatible with all modern Western Digital HDD driven by a real SATA controler.

Compatibility with SATA-to-USB adapters is uncertain.

Since idle3ctl uses SMART ATA commands to get and set the idle3 timer, it should work if SMART information can be read from your drive.

The value 0 is used when the timer is disabled.

The values 1 to 128 are reported in .1s by all wdidle3.exe versions.

The values 129 to 255 are in .1s for version 1.00, but in 30s for versions 1.03 and 1.05

The difference only affects the output, the stored timer is identical between versions.Maybe different WD drives have different beheviour.

I have 2 western digital drives and they both get detected but have massive issues like trying to write/read to them.

Does linux have issues with western digital drives or should I search for another problem?

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How to Ask Questions the Smart Way

Im asking these questions to narrow down the potential causes of failure.

They are both new drives from separate sellers on different sites.

Ive never had these problems with hard drives as all my current ones work fine.

Both of the drives died of me trying to use them.

The wd black now makes a clicking noise when spinning up that it didn't before, even though i know that the powersupply is more than enough to handle it.

The wd greens latency is through the roof and it takes a long time to do anything with it and every now and then it kinda dissaepears from lsblk.

long story short, the drive just stalls operations to incredibly long latencys...

cant SMART test it,. cant format it, its just there but its not usable

Not much else to add other from the info above

I mean, yes it was listed as new, but I can prove that I have a working drive with twice the uptime lmao. Im having no problems with either!

Why dont they make anything good nowdays :joy:

But yeah, I want to replace my old drives with faster and bigger stuff.

My Passport is a series of external hard drives manufactured by Western Digital, commonly known as WD. These hard drives are an ideal choice for everyday users. Many rely on WD as backup drives to store important data such as photos, videos, projects, and documents.

Yes, it is possible to recover data from a WD My Passport in a variety of scenarios. Whether dealing with logical errors like accidental deletion on a healthy drive or addressing light damage with bad sectors, hard drive recovery tools like Disk Drill can be effective. However, for drives with significant physical damage, professional data recovery services are typically necessary.

Data loss can occur in various scenarios, such as accidental deletion or drive formatting, where the drive itself shows no signs of physical damage. In these cases, the data is often still recoverable because the loss is due to logical errors rather than physical issues with the drive.

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