[smartmontools-support] Inconsistent long test times

[Kent Watsen]

Is this level of variability normal?
Should I return all the WD drives?

K.


> Preface: I did read https://www.smartmontools.org/wiki/FAQ#Whydoself-teststakeverylong.
> 
> I recently ordered 10x 2TB SATA drives:
> 
>    5x WD Blue WD20SPZX
>        - 2x from Amazon
>        - 3x from NewEgg
>    5x Seagate BarraCuda ST2000LM015
>        - 3x from Amazon
>        - 2x from NewEgg
> 
> All of the Seagate drives say to wait ~330 minutes for the long tests to complete.  All of these drives have the same “Product” (ST2000LM015-2E81) and “Revision” (0001) values.
> 
> However, there is a variation in the WD drives. 
>  - the 3 drives from NewEgg say to wait 119 minutes for the long tests to complete.
>  - the 2 drives from Amazon say to wait 737 minutes for the tests to compete.
> 
> Digging deeper, the “Product” and “Revision” values of the WD drives vary:
>  - the 3 drives from NewEgg: Product WDC WD20SPZX-22U Revision: 1A01
>  - the 2 drives from Amazon: WDC WD20SPZX-75U Revision: 6712
> 
> From https://www.smartmontools.org/wiki/FAQ#Whydoself-teststakeverylong, I understand that WD may have tweaked things between revisions of the WD20SPZX and all this may be normal, but it seems that the numbers are at the two extremes (assuming the Seagate numbers are a baseline) and thus seem strange to me.
> 
> Any thoughts on if this is normal?  Or what “normal” should be for 2TB SATA 3.1, 6.0 Gb/s drives?
> 
> Thanks,
> Kent