SMART status failing on a WD Scorpio Black WD3200BEKT 320GB 7200 RPM

Question

I just recently purchased a Western Digital Scorpio Black WD3200BEKT 320GB 7200 RPM drive to put in my 1st Gen MacBook Pro. Ever since installing the drive, I've had random beach balls happen usually when there is a fair amount of disk I/O.
Thinking the drive was bad, I sent it back and got another one. I am still seeing the same frequent beach balls requiring a hard restart to get the system to be responsive again.
Checking the System Profiler, I see that the drive is failing SMART status. I also checked the kernel logs and am getting I/O errors on the drive at the point when the system beach balls.
I am pretty certain it isn't the drive. I'm at a loss for what to try next. Is this drive not compatible with my SATA interface. Any suggestions or comments?
Below are some of my pertinent machine information from System Profiler:
Model Name: MacBook Pro 15"
Model Identifier: MacBookPro1,1
Processor Name: Intel Core Duo
Processor Speed: 1.83 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache: 2 MB
Memory: 2 GB
Bus Speed: 667 MHz
Boot ROM Version: MBP11.0055.B08
SMC Version (system): 1.2f10
Sudden Motion Sensor:
State: Enabled
Below is the Serial-ATA information from the System Profiler:
Intel ICH7-M AHCI:
Vendor: Intel
Product: ICH7-M AHCI
Speed: 1.5 Gigabit
Description: AHCI Version 1.10 Supported
WDC WD3200BEKT-60F3T1:
Capacity: 298.09 GB
Model: WDC WD3200BEKT-60F3T1
Revision: 12.01A12
Native Command Queuing: Yes
Queue Depth: 32
Removable Media: No
Detachable Drive: No
BSD Name: disk0
Mac OS 9 Drivers: No
Partition Map Type: GPT (GUID Partition Table)
S.M.A.R.T. status: Failing
Volumes:
Macintosh HD:
Capacity: 297.77 GB
Available: 153.19 GB
Writable: Yes
File System: Journaled HFS+
BSD Name: disk0s2
Mount Point: /
I also ran this to check the current speed of the SATA interface since the drive is a SATA II drive with a 3.0gb/s burst.
$ sudo ioreg -l | grep 'Interconnect"="SATA"'
| | | | "Protocol Characteristics" = {"Physical Interconnect"="SATA","Physical Interconnect Location"="Internal/External"}
| | | | "Protocol Characteristics" = {"Physical Interconnect"="SATA","AHCI Port Number"=0,"Physical Interconnect Location"="Internal","Port Speed"="1.5 Gigabit$
| | | | "Protocol Characteristics" = {"Physical Interconnect"="SATA","Physical Interconnect Location"="Internal"}
The above shows that the interface is running at 1.5gb/s SATA I which is what I excepted on this system.
Thanks!
Dustin

Answer 1

Sounds like you have things well sorted out.
Despite that fact that you have had two consecutive HDDs with defects does not, necessarily, mean that all of those drive are defective. However, you are fortunate that you were able to get you money back. Seagate makes good drives, as does WD, and hopefully you have paid your dues and you will have no more incidents.
Do post back should you run into stuff and need to bounce ideas off someone else.
Good luck.
cornelius
I will certainly report back on my luck with Seagate.
You are correct that the failure of two consecutive drives does not mean the whole line is faulty. The drive I was replacing in the MacBook Pro was actually a Western Digital Scopio as well (just not a Blue or Black) and it has performed flawlessly. It's the drive I have reinstalled twice now while I waited for the replacement drive to be shipped.
Another interesting anecdote is that I searched the NewEgg customer comments for reports of SMART errors on the Western Digital Scorpio Black drive I had ordered and sure enough, there were quite a few postings where people had tried multiple times to get a good drive.
It's just one of those things that you start to question, especially with older hardware like I am using (1st Gen MacBook Pro) that maybe backwards compatible quirks between SATA 1 and SATA 2 are the real problem not the drive itself. I'm still not 100% convinced that the drives were the true culprit. Hard to say for sure.
Not to mention all the troubles I've been reading about with 3rd party drives and the recent 1.7 EFI update which has caused similar errors as to what I was seeing with these drives. The first drive I had didn't throw any SMART errors, or at least I didn't notice them.
I'm gonna order the Seagate Momentus 7200.4 ST9320423AS 320GB 7200 RPM 2.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s and see what happens. I'll report back my findings in another thread so that people who search for the Seagate drive will have a more related thread to read.
Dustin