I had a Virtual Machine was running slow, and after ruling out software, I took at look at the logs on the host and sure enough, I had a drive failing. A four year old, 2TB WD Black Model WD2003FZEX-00Z4SA0.
It took a few days to get an RMA number since I submitted my details on a Friday afternoon. But Wednesday AM the following week, I had an RMA number and the details available for download.
Since I had some other 2TB drives, I was able to get most of my data off this drive. I was using it to hold downloads, ISO files and the VM disk images. So I wasn't backing it up as the files were either available elsewhere or impractical to backup. I'd export the machine every so often, so I could just import the most recent export.
I could have provided a credit card number and cross-shipped the disk, but since I had other drives lying around, I just went the slow route.
On Friday, i got the replacement WD sent me the 4TB disk in the family. Twice the capacity, same speeds and cache.
Really a hassle free experience.
I ended up moving my data from an existing 3TB drive to the 4TB WD black, and then moved the data from the 2TB drive to the now free 3TB disk.
The only thing I lost was the one VM where the bad sectors were on the disk. Everything else was retrievable from the old disk.
It was an older version of Linux, so I just took the opportunity to build a new VM with a newer release of Oracle Enterprise Linux. (Don't laugh, I use it for work..)
All in all, while a bit annoying, drives fail. I replace enough of them at work to know to have backups of anything I can't readily replace.
It took a few days to get an RMA number since I submitted my details on a Friday afternoon. But Wednesday AM the following week, I had an RMA number and the details available for download.
Since I had some other 2TB drives, I was able to get most of my data off this drive. I was using it to hold downloads, ISO files and the VM disk images. So I wasn't backing it up as the files were either available elsewhere or impractical to backup. I'd export the machine every so often, so I could just import the most recent export.
I could have provided a credit card number and cross-shipped the disk, but since I had other drives lying around, I just went the slow route.
On Friday, i got the replacement WD sent me the 4TB disk in the family. Twice the capacity, same speeds and cache.
Really a hassle free experience.
I ended up moving my data from an existing 3TB drive to the 4TB WD black, and then moved the data from the 2TB drive to the now free 3TB disk.
The only thing I lost was the one VM where the bad sectors were on the disk. Everything else was retrievable from the old disk.
It was an older version of Linux, so I just took the opportunity to build a new VM with a newer release of Oracle Enterprise Linux. (Don't laugh, I use it for work..)
All in all, while a bit annoying, drives fail. I replace enough of them at work to know to have backups of anything I can't readily replace.