# WD 2TB Black error : current pending sector [SOLVED]



## alivehunter (Jul 4, 2017)

I am really disappointed with WD HDD internal drives.
I have bought the 1 TB WD Blue in 2014 which went bad and was RMA to get a fresh WD Blue. this was within a year for purchase.

Next this *1 TB WD Blue* new drive again gone *bad within 10 months of usage.*. which was *RMA* for a fresh new *2TB WB BLACK 

Now this WD BLACK* (which is su[pose to be a higher quality HDD) *gone bad with 1.3 years of usage.

Now i really doubt the quality of HHD produced by WD.. 
*
current issue :  system asking to run the recovery tool during boot, takes long time to boot, sometimes does not boot at all, giving error : current pending sector


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## Toothless (Jul 4, 2017)

Not sure what to tell you besides try Seagate. My Caviar Green has been solid now for nearly 8 years and it's suppose to be one of the worst WD has made.


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## alivehunter (Jul 4, 2017)

is there anything i can do to save this disk ??


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## TheoneandonlyMrK (Jul 4, 2017)

alivehunter said:


> I am really disappointed with WD HDD internal drives.
> I have bought the 1 TB WD Blue in 2014 which went bad and was RMA to get a fresh WD Blue. this was within a year for purchase.
> 
> Next this *1 TB WD Blue* new drive again gone *bad within 10 months of usage.*. which was *RMA* for a fresh new *2TB WB BLACK
> ...


I understand your concern but I think your either unlucky or maybe blameing the wrong thing , a motherboard can cause hdd death with poor pciex bus frequency regulation for example.
The only hdd i ever had fail was a wd blue , one of three in raid0 by not clamping that bus speed while overclocking bcclck bus.
Ive got a lot of old drives at 5+ years old and no deaths lately.
I mentioned it as two in the same pc seams like a lot of bad luck.


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## rtwjunkie (Jul 4, 2017)

alivehunter said:


> I am really disappointed with WD HDD internal drives.
> I have bought the 1 TB WD Blue in 2014 which went bad and was RMA to get a fresh WD Blue. this was within a year for purchase.
> 
> Next this *1 TB WD Blue* new drive again gone *bad within 10 months of usage.*. which was *RMA* for a fresh new *2TB WB BLACK
> ...



I feel your frustration to be sure, but you are taking your anecdotal experience and applying it to an entire company.  I can counter that with a server full of 8 WD HDD, 4 of which are are over 30,000 hours.  I have numerous other WD drives throughout the house running, including in my system specs, that have gone through daily cold starts and 15 to 20,000 hours.  I've had one fail on me. All others I replaced because I needed more capacity.

I think there is perhaps something else at play here, including the possibility of just plain bad luck.  Maybe we could figure out what else is going on?


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## DRDNA (Jul 4, 2017)

Are all your drives idling at almost 40 cels and is that normal for your drives? Also what is the MAX temps recorded for the failing drives according to SMART? For comparison my drives normally hover around 25 Cels and will hit mid 40 under extreme loads only.....also is there any vibrations being exposed to the rig with the failing hard-drives? like say maybe a sub-woofer.....or maybe the rig is on a bench shelve that get smacked around a lot while working on the bench? Just saying that this is food for thought.


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## DeathtoGnomes (Jul 4, 2017)

Is that drive being used as an external drive? If so, how is it powered? If it has its own wall transformer pluggy thingy doo-dad, I'd say your luck dried up there. Otherwise check your PSU and connections to it.


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## Filip Georgievski (Jul 4, 2017)

Most of my drives exept for my SSD which is Kingston are all WD.
I have an external 640GB Green and it is still going strong after 8 years, i have a 1TB Blue in my rig along with the SSD. I also have a 500GB small 2.5 also WD which is used 4 - 5 years. Also i got another 500GB on my other machine for light work. My Toshiba laptop has a 1TB WD as well going 2 - 3 years.
All are good, no bad sectors, no corruption, no excessive heat, nothing.

There may be something to do with that board, maybe higher voltage, or something or just plain bad luck.
I would check sata conections to board and sata power from PSU.
Also instal AIDA 64 Extreme and see how much power is that drive pulling. Could be a bad power regulator on the drive itself.

Also try getting that drive hooked up to adapter or a external box with external power adapter to USB and see if you get different results on your drive. Just to rule out SATA.


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## OneMoar (Jul 4, 2017)

op is doing something wrong ...


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## eidairaman1 (Jul 4, 2017)

Hitachi, samsung or seagate.

watch out for esd and grounding in a case.

Otherwise you need a ups with filtration of power


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## OneMoar (Jul 4, 2017)

if hes killing drives at <2000 hours 
then hes doing _something_ wrong
its unheard of


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## eidairaman1 (Jul 4, 2017)

OneMoar said:


> if hes killing drives at <2000 hours
> then hes doing _something_ wrong
> its unheard of



Torrents, mining, using non server drives for server tasks.


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## Beastie (Jul 5, 2017)

I suspect PSU, cables or mobo.

 I have run WD drives for 30000hrs plus including much thrashing with torrents with no issues.

 Posssibly OP is very unlucky or more likely there is another issue.


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## therealmeep (Jul 5, 2017)

Something isn't right, i use wd for just about everything and ive been using a wd black with known issues since the beginning of sata 6gig.


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## Jetster (Jul 5, 2017)

OneMoar said:


> op is doing something wrong ...




I'm goin out on a limb and saying there is nothing wrong with the drive. Run WD Tools and talk to *SuperSoph_WD*

*Crystal Disk and HD Tune are not the end all tests *

*https://support.wdc.com/downloads.aspx?DL*


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## Chicken Patty (Jul 5, 2017)

I'm at loss of words here.  I have had only one HDD in my entire life fail on me and it was when I first got into PC's I was using some Hitachi drive.  I have used WD since then and have never had a drive fail.  I have one in my closet that I used for 7 years, I just plugged it into my 2nd computer, installed windows and I'm using it to type this up right now.  I hate to say this, but make sure you don't have any other issues causing your HDD's to go bad.  Check PSU voltages, grounding in the case, etc.  Not sure what else to check for, but seems like something is making them go bad much quicker than they should.


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## alivehunter (Jul 5, 2017)

DRDNA said:


> Are all your drives idling at almost 40 cels and is that normal for your drives? Also what is the MAX temps recorded for the failing drives according to SMART? For comparison my drives normally hover around 25 Cels and will hit mid 40 under extreme loads only.....also is there any vibrations being exposed to the rig with the failing hard-drives? like say maybe a sub-woofer.....or maybe the rig is on a bench shelve that get smacked around a lot while working on the bench? Just saying that this is food for thought.


37 Cels to 38 Cels


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## alivehunter (Jul 5, 2017)

DeathtoGnomes said:


> Is that drive being used as an external drive? If so, how is it powered? If it has its own wall transformer pluggy thingy doo-dad, I'd say your luck dried up there. Otherwise check your PSU and connections to it.


its the Internal single drive I have in my system


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## alivehunter (Jul 5, 2017)

Jetster said:


> Run WD Tools and talk





Jetster said:


> I'm goin out on a limb and saying there is nothing wrong with the drive. Run WD Tools and talk to *SuperSoph_WD*
> 
> *Crystal Disk and HD Tune are not the end all tests *
> 
> *https://support.wdc.com/downloads.aspx?DL*



Yesterday my system refused to Boot in windows 7...  but somehow i managed to go in the cmd mode and did a *chkdsk /r* one-by-one to each partition on the drive. post that I could boot into windows 7. The log for the chkdsk did not mention any error. 
Also once again I checked the CrystalDiskInfo & HD Tune.. it gave me the same warning.

but not i am able to boot into windows. Also checked the WD Data Lifegaurd.. the SMART info in this show no issue at all.  

all the more confused ..!!


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## cdawall (Jul 5, 2017)

DRDNA said:


> Are all your drives idling at almost 40 cels and is that normal for your drives? Also what is the MAX temps recorded for the failing drives according to SMART? For comparison my drives normally hover around 25 Cels and will hit mid 40 under extreme loads only.....also is there any vibrations being exposed to the rig with the failing hard-drives? like say maybe a sub-woofer.....or maybe the rig is on a bench shelve that get smacked around a lot while working on the bench? Just saying that this is food for thought.



Temps don't really matter. My server is up 24/7 running raid 50 across 10 refurbished seagate "enterprise" drivers they live at a constant 60c temp. One of the drives has failed slapped in a desktop grade seagate and haven't had an issue since.

The vibration thing I agree with or an awful psu that doesn't maintain atx spec would be my next guesses


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## Jetster (Jul 5, 2017)

alivehunter said:


> Yesterday my system refused to Boot in windows 7...  but somehow i managed to go in the cmd mode and did a *chkdsk /r* one-by-one to each partition on the drive. post that I could boot into windows 7. The log for the chkdsk did not mention any error.
> Also once again I checked the CrystalDiskInfo & HD Tune.. it gave me the same warning.
> 
> but not i am able to boot into windows. Also checked the WD Data Lifegaurd.. the SMART info in this show no issue at all.
> ...




I would do a complete reinstall. I know its a pain but something else is going on.  When you do the format and install only have the system drive connected, make sue its GPT and AHCI. Any secondary drives connect after the install is complete


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## Steevo (Jul 5, 2017)

cdawall said:


> Temps don't really matter. My server is up 24/7 running raid 50 across 10 refurbished seagate "enterprise" drivers they live at a constant 60c temp. One of the drives has failed slapped in a desktop grade seagate and haven't had an issue since.
> 
> The vibration thing I agree with or an awful psu that doesn't maintain atx spec would be my next guesses



Exactly, the drive results from many companies show, until you reach above 45C continuous operating temps it is better to have a warm drive than a cold one, but 47C is better than a cold drive, and if it makes it past year one, it will most likely make it past year 3. 

I would suspect the PSU, or other issues as mentioned in this thread, like clock stability. Buy a cheap RAID/Interface card to isolate the drives from the board, $25 to see if its the board, and get some ferrite choke rings and run your power wires through them.


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## IBRAHIM_007 (Jul 9, 2017)

first of all forgive me for my bad english

second you have high ( power on count ) did you disable power saving in idle ? both in windows and bios
i think turning on and off alot the hard drive wear it faster

your hard drive :
power on count = 1823
power on hours = 1900

i have same drives as yours

but my hard drives ( using it for 9 months so far , i keep my pc on most of the time with a good air flow to keep them cool 31c ~ 32 c with disabled power saving both in windows and bios )

2TB WD Black WD 2003FZEX :
power on count = 490
power on hours = 5203
https://image.ibb.co/fNppQF/2_TB_WD_Black.png

1TB WD Blue WD10EZEX :
power on count = 473
power on hours = 5202
https://image.ibb.co/cv1Qza/1_TB_WD_Black.png

both have good health status

but i have problem with the black one , not detected when i restart sometimes ( yes i tried everything , im sure the problem is in the hard drive )

also you might just have a bad luck , because i have old external drive with high power on and off count , and still good

im not defending WD , im just telling you about the power saving thing

WD 2TB Black 2003FZEX consume 9.5 w ( read / write) 8.1w ( idle ) 1.3w ( standby/sleep )

WD 1TB Blue WD10EZEX consume 6.8 w ( read / write) 6.1w ( idle ) 1.2w ( standby/sleep )

so for me saving ~5 watts per drive or ~10 watts for 2 drives , not worth it ( because it wear them down much faster )

i like power saving but not on HDDs


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## INSTG8R (Jul 9, 2017)

I have 2 1TB Balcks I. RAID 0 that are easy pushing 7 years. They were before the flood/price hike. I have a 1B Blue as well but it’s maybe 2yrs old.


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## Vya Domus (Jul 9, 2017)

I know someone that had a PSU that was killing drives through the sata power cable.

Anyway HDDs are the most unreliable components in a PC , wouldn't surprise me if these drives just failed by themselves with no connection. I had 2 seagate drives fail on me in less than a year.


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## alivehunter (Jul 12, 2017)

Yesterday I formatted my HDD. (I dont have a secondary HDD).
I started installing Win 7,
1. during the step where we have option for selection/del of partition..
2. I deleted all the existing partition.. created a new partition as c: with 200 GB.. kept the remaining as UN-Allocated... and
3. went ahead with the installation of win 7.
4. After completion on Win7, I went to disk management and did a *Full Format* for the *remaining UN-Allocated space*.. it took around 3hrs to complete the same.

post all these i check the SMART STATUS using CrystalDiskInfo... the status was GOOD again.. check the image..
NOW.. can I trust this HDD .. or its still un-reliable.
What has actually happened to the HDD so as to show GOOD STATUS again ??


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## Jetster (Jul 12, 2017)

evidently your previous partition's caused an unstable sector that was flagged for remapping. Your drive was and is fine


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## alivehunter (Jul 12, 2017)

Jetster said:


> evidently your previous partition's caused an unstable sector that was flagged for remapping. Your drive was and is fine


Thanks .. Thats a gud news ... so i can consider this disk as reliable for important data...


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## rtwjunkie (Jul 12, 2017)

alivehunter said:


> Thanks .. Thats a gud news ... so i can consider this disk as reliable for important data...


Keep an eye on it though. If pending sector count or reallocated sector count numbers start changing again, then you have a problem drive.


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## Gasaraki (Jul 12, 2017)

I have like 10 WD Black drives at home, the 2TB version since 2011-2012 and none of them have died.


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## Chicken Patty (Jul 12, 2017)

Coincidently I was praising WD earlier in this post and one of my 2TB WD Black drives died last night.  Although I will say I think it was excessive heat.  In my old case they didn't have a fan blowing air on them, they had a fan above the HDD's.  In my new case I didn't hook up the front panel fans because I was waiting on some 4-pin extensions.  But when the drive failed I touched it and it was literally burning to the touch.  Luckily I had like three things installed on it only so damage was minimal.

My ambient temps during the day while in at work can get up to 90°F inside my house so those HDD's see some fair amount of heat, I already connected the fans ghetto rigged for now.


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## Sasqui (Jul 12, 2017)

Chicken Patty said:


> Coincidently I was praising WD earlier in this post and one of my 2TB WD Black drives died last night.  Although I will say I think it was excessive heat.  In my old case they didn't have a fan blowing air on them, they had a fan above the HDD's.  In my new case I didn't hook up the front panel fans because I was waiting on some 4-pin extensions.  But when the drive failed I touched it and it was literally burning to the touch.  Luckily I had like three things installed on it only so damage was minimal.
> 
> My ambient temps during the day while in at work can get up to 90°F inside my house so those HDD's see some fair amount of heat, I already connected the fans ghetto rigged for now.



Myabe I shouldn't jinx myself.  I have approximately 10 WD drives some over 10 years old, almost all Black.  Not a single problem.  Some of the black do get quite hot.


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## Chicken Patty (Jul 12, 2017)

Sasqui said:


> Myabe I shouldn't jinx myself.  I have approximately 10 WD drives some over 10 years old, almost all Black.  Not a single problem.  Some of the black do get quite hot.


I just figured in the previous case they didn't have a fan directly on them. So I figured it would be okay in this one.  For some reason they got excessively hot.  I might just replace these drives soon or at least back up my data to avoid disaster.  They do make great drives, but with the heat they see, I'm not blaming them for this failure at least.


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## The Data Master (Jul 12, 2017)

I have had the exact opposite luck as OP. I have about 9 WD drives running perfectly fine, yet all Seagate drives I purchased failed. I blamed Seagate for a long time before thinking that I could have bricked the drives myself with overheating, brownouts, or other factors that were beyond Seagate's control. Honestly, I haven't had much luck at all with Non-SSDs purchased after the Tsunami in 2011. I think quality control is just not there and that more resources on testing before shipping are being poured into SSDs than HDDs now-a-days. Again, I said I think meaning the last statement is just my opinion.

I have found that the brand doesn't matter, all drives come from the same countries with the same materials and the same working conditions. Only difference is company policy and marketing.


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## Chicken Patty (Jul 12, 2017)

The Data Master said:


> I have had the exact opposite luck as OP. I have about 9 WD drives running perfectly fine, yet all Seagate drives I purchased failed. I blamed Seagate for a long time before thinking that I could have bricked the drives myself with overheating, brownouts, or other factors that were beyond Seagate's control. Honestly, I haven't had much luck at all with Non-SSDs purchased after the Tsunami in 2011. I think quality control is just not there and that more resources on testing before shipping are being poured into SSDs than HDDs now-a-days. Again, I said I think meaning the last statement is just my opinion.
> 
> I have found that the brand doesn't matter, all drives come from the same countries with the same materials and the same working conditions. Only difference is company policy and marketing.


Before my current WD Black HDD's I had some Seagates and those lasted what I consider a short time.  Maybe 3-4 years tops.  To my knowledge I never put them through any abnormal conditions such as over stressed or excessive heat.  But who knows.  Since then WD has been good to me.  Like I said, this drive that just failed on me was running extremely hot which probably lead to failure.


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## Jetster (Jul 12, 2017)

You should really change the thread title. Sense the drive is good.


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## xkm1948 (Jul 12, 2017)

Why would anyone still buy consumer version of WD/Seagate? Go for their enterprise rated HDD and you will rarely have any dead drives. If you HAVE to buy consumer grade HDD, I would recommend HGST or Toshiba.

At this point it is pretty risky to buy high capacity consumer grade HDDs. If I got the cash I would say helium filled enterprise drives are your best bet for large internal storage.


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## Chicken Patty (Jul 12, 2017)

xkm1948 said:


> Why would anyone still buy consumer version of WD/Seagate? Go for their enterprise rated HDD and you will rarely have any dead drives. If you HAVE to buy consumer grade HDD, I would recommend HGST or Toshiba.
> 
> At this point it is pretty risky to buy high capacity consumer grade HDDs. If I got the cash I would say helium filled enterprise drives are your best bet for large internal storage.


Never thought of that.  I guess they are just built to different standards? What sets them apart?


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## xkm1948 (Jul 12, 2017)

Chicken Patty said:


> Never thought of that.  I guess they are just built to different standards? What sets them apart?




Quality control. Enterprise HDD platters have to pass way stricter quality check. Those plates that won't cut as top enterprise drives get stuffed into consumer grade drives.  With data density gets higher and higher, it is just difficult to entrust several TB of data to a single consumer grade HDD.

That reminds me of another solution. Buy a whole bunch of 1TB HDDs and RAID10 them. You get speed, capcacity and data safety. Only down side is you have to deal with RAID now.


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## DeathtoGnomes (Jul 12, 2017)

Chicken Patty said:


> Coincidently I was praising WD earlier in this post and one of my 2TB WD Black drives died last night.  Although I will say I think it was excessive heat.  In my old case they didn't have a fan blowing air on them, they had a fan above the HDD's.  In my new case I didn't hook up the front panel fans because I was waiting on some 4-pin extensions.  But when the drive failed I touched it and it was literally burning to the touch.  Luckily I had like three things installed on it only so damage was minimal.
> 
> My ambient temps during the day while in at work can get up to 90°F inside my house so those HDD's see some fair amount of heat, I already connected the fans ghetto rigged for now.


I love ghetto rigged pics !


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## Chicken Patty (Jul 12, 2017)

DeathtoGnomes said:


> I love ghetto rigged pics !


It's not really ghetto rigged, I just have some decent cable management (in my eyes) and these are not that long so I couldn't route them out of the way.  I had to just run it straight to the motherboard so they are not tucked away all nice. But hey, they work for now.


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## DeathtoGnomes (Jul 12, 2017)

Chicken Patty said:


> It's not really ghetto rigged, I just have some decent cable management (in my eyes) and these are not that long so I couldn't route them out of the way.  I had to just run it straight to the motherboard so they are not tucked away all nice. But hey, they work for now.


Well let us know when you resort to duct taping fans to your HDD.

Nothing like 15k rpm fans to improve case airflow.


IMO, I would not trust that drive with any critical ..stuff. Do whatever you need to do to get another drive and save this one as a spare.


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## eidairaman1 (Jul 12, 2017)

Part of reason I dont Partition, the hdd head/platter has to move more often, space is lost.

I set paging to a definite amount so it doesn't have to expand/contract constantly 4096MB minimum, 8192GB maximum depending on system. I do the  same with the recycle bin 1024 MB-2048MB

Ive heard that moving paging to a separate drive improves performance, by how much I don't know.

Ive never seen a HDD take 3 hours to format unless if there is an issue with it decaying


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## Chicken Patty (Jul 12, 2017)

DeathtoGnomes said:


> Well let us know when you resort to duct taping fans to your HDD.
> 
> Nothing like 15k rpm fans to improve case airflow.
> 
> ...


Hahaha, not sure if I've duct taped fans before, but I've came close to doing so 

And yes I'm in the process of looking for a replacement drive (s).  Oh the joy.


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## DeathtoGnomes (Jul 12, 2017)

Chicken Patty said:


> Hahaha, not sure if I've duct taped fans before, but I've came close to doing so
> 
> And yes I'm in the process of looking for a replacement drive (s).  Oh the joy.


I meant that comment for the OP, didnt dawn on me it applied to you too.


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## Chicken Patty (Jul 12, 2017)

DeathtoGnomes said:


> I meant that comment for the OP, didnt dawn on me it applied to you too.


Haha, it's all good.


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## alivehunter (Jul 13, 2017)

Jetster said:


> You should really change the thread title. Sense the drive is good.


title updated ..


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## alivehunter (Jul 13, 2017)

Thanks to all for the support


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