Hi, so a few weeks ago my hard drive randomly decided to slow to snail speed. Activity was always in the kb/s but always at 100% with around 32000 ms response time.
I then backed up everything and proceeded to format the hard drive completely and reinstalled windows after running a chkdsk on it.
So far its running OK but today I decided to open up defraggler and it said:
Current Pending Sector Count : 248 (It was 232 a few days ago IIRC)
Reallocation Event Count : 35
Should I be worried?
Its a Hitachi HTS545050A7E380 and only been powered on for 335d 19h so far.
Analyzes 40,000 hard drives SMART data to show which seem important as indicators of failure.
Summary:
"From experience, we have found the following 5 SMART metrics indicate impending disk drive failure:
SMART 5 – Reallocated_Sector_Count.
SMART 187 – Reported_Uncorrectable_Errors.
SMART 188 – Command_Timeout.
SMART 197 – Current_Pending_Sector_Count.
SMART 198 – Offline_Uncorrectable.
We chose these 5 stats based on our experience and input from others in the industry because they are consistent across manufacturers and they are good predictors of failure."
Since your drive exhibits 2 of these 5 error, I'd consider it hosed.
2 of Seagate Barracuda XT ST32000641AS (2TB ea.);
1 of Seagate Barracuda Green ST2000DL003 (2TB);
1 of Hitachi Deskstar HDS722020ALA330 (2TB);
2 of Seagate Desktop ST4000DM000-1F2168 (4TB)
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Event Studio Precision 6 powered audio monitors;
Boston Acoustics CS Sub 10 Powered Subwoofer;
NI Kore controller;
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M-Audio Axiom 61 keyboard controller; expression pedal; sustain pedal;
... and tons of audio software ...
I also keep two USB 3 thumb drives (A: and B:) attached with boot recovery and security stuff that I can boot into from BIOS in case of emergency
The "Reallocated Sector Count" is the number of bad sectors detected during a write operation and have been reallocated to sectors reserved for the purpose. The "Current Pending Sector Count" are sectors that gave an error when a read was attempted. These cannot be immediately reallocated because the data they contain is unknown. The sector will be reallocated if a later read is successful or the sector was written.
The "Current Pending Sector Count" is high and the fact that the number has recently risen is a particular concern. Usually such errors are progressive and will only get worse with time. There are only a limited number of sectors available for replacement purposes and when reached errors cannot be corrected. There is no way of knowing when that will be.
Backup your data ASAP and prepare to replace the drive.
I have a seagate with 44 realocated sectors in 03/2012 and its still going strong today, I suspect a software problem caused the reallocated sectors (SMART 5).
I have a seagate with 44 realocated sectors in 03/2012 and its still going strong today, I suspect a software problem caused the reallocated sectors (SMART 5).
Detection and management of sector remapping is done internally within the drive and is not effected by even system software. Aside from SMART software has no knowledge of or involvement in the process.
SMART warnings do not necessarily mean that drive failure is imminent but they often do. Ignore such warnings at peril to your data.
Continue to monitor SMART status carefully and take note of any changes. Of course you should have a backup of your data and have the ability to restore the OS if drive replacement is necessary.
I don't think you should be "worried". I think you should continue on the path you are taking (except the reformatting and reinstalling part) and just keep watch.
SMART is designed to alert administrators of "potential" problems, not "impending" problems. Potential problems may never actually happen while impending problems are likely to happen at any moment. I know many who were tired of getting SMART errors so they disabled SMART monitoring and continued to use the drives for many years with no problems. I am NOT suggesting you do that. I am just saying SMART errors don't necessarily mean imminent doom.
You said you immediately backed up your data and ran chkdsk. Wise move! I hope you ran chkdsk /r for the most thorough analysis and repair. If not, then I recommend you do that and see what errors come up, if any.
I recommend you run the Western Digital's Drive Fitness Test on the drive (WD owns Hitachi now) and see what it says. It appears that drive has a 3 year warranty. If less than 3 years old and it fails the test, you can easily use the test results to request a RMA for a free replacement (you pay shipping one way).
