WD Black 6TB Drive Won't Initialize with I/O Error Message

[Brandon_Byrnes]

Sorry about the formatting I copied and pasted this from my post on r/techsupport on reddit where I am also asking about this.

I RMAed my original WD Black 6TB drive because I accidentally broke the sata power connector. WD sent me back a “recertified” drive of the same model. Specifically WD6003FZBX. When I try to initialize the HDD is Disk Manager it detects the drive saying “You Must Initialize a Disk Before Logical Disk Manager can Access It”, then asks if I want it to be GPT or MBR, I select GPT, it then looks like it working then I get the error message, The request could not be performed because of an I/O Device error.
I have tried switching sata power cables, switching sata data cables, switching sata headers on my mobo, and even disconnecting my other two sata drives leaving only this drive connected and I still get the error. When i right click the drive in disk manager and select properties under “Device Status” it says, This device is working properly. Volumes tab shows:
Disk: Disk 0
Type: Unknown
Status: Not Initialized
Partition style: Not Applicable
Events tab shows Device configured (disk.inf) and Device started (disk)

Event Viewer shows:
Device SCSI\Disk&Ven_WDC&Prod_WD6003FZBX-00K5W\5&3955aa6&0&010000 was configured.
Driver Name: disk.infClass Guid: {4d36e967-e325-11ce-bfc1-08002be10318}
Driver Date: 06/21/2006
Driver Version: 10.0.22621.2506
Driver Provider: MicrosoftDriver
Section: disk_install.
NTDriver Rank: 0xFF0005
Matching Device Id: GenDiskOutranked
Drivers: Device
Updated: falseParent
Device: PCI\VEN_1022&DEV_43EB&SUBSYS_10621B21&REV_00\4&20e 120c7&0&010A
I CANNOT run chkdsk on the drive because it DOES NOT have a assigned letter because it can’t be initialized to assign a drive letter. When I check Crystal Disk Info the drive does not show, I’m assuming because it hasn’t been initialized.
Hopefully that’s enough info for you guys. If you need anymore info I’ll be happy to provide it, but at this point I’m guessing Western Digital sent me a DOA RMA replacement.

[Bastet]

I would try using diskpart to clean the drive:
Right click Start>Powershell/Terminal with admin & entter:
diskpart
list disk
select disk X (where X is the # of the WD drive)
clean
exit
exit

No open disk management & it should allow you to format the drive, it may ask you to initialise the disk first.
If at any time the drive gives an error then it is a dud & should be returned.

[Brandon_Byrnes]

Okay did as suggested but still got the I/O error, here’s a screenshot of the disks smart info from speccy. That Total erase count has me confused.

[ATTACH type=“full” width=“550px”]13010[/ATTACH]

[Bruce]

while SMART values are non-standard and vary between manufacturers, some of those fields are weird.
like A4 at 51 billion!
two temperature fields, C2 and E7 - never seen that before.
and D2 and D3 can’t be good! (and why two)

then you have a drive that errors during Initialise and during DiskPart clean and is ‘recertified’ - I’d be calling that a lemon and getting a replacement.

[Brandon_Byrnes]

yeah. I alreaday emailed the WD rep that I was in contact with during the orignal RMA and told her what is going one. Asked about them possibly just sending a new replacment instead of making me go through the whole RMA process again. I even suggested maybe sending me a different model of drive, instead of their WD Black model maybe send their Gold/Enterprise model since they carry the same capacity, both 7200rpm, same 256 cache and the Gold or Enterprice is less expensive then their Black model atleast currently on Amazon and I would guess the enterprise model would last longer.
Also I tried WD Live chat and sat there in the queue for an hour as first in line just to be told no reps could be connected, I’m assuming because it’s Thanksgiving, but they forgot to shutdown live chat.

[Brandon_Byrnes]

Update: You can close this thread. I sent the drive in for RMA. What a joke having to send in an RMA replacement FOR RMA. Hopefully WD actually sends me a new drive instead of a “recertified” drive or hopefully they atleast test the drive before they send it to me to make sure it actually works.