My hard disk has health status "Caution", should I worry?

I just recently ran CrystalDiskInfo and it said that my hard disk health status is "Caution". I also recently updated my laptop to Windows 8.1 from Windows 8 and that's when I felt my laptop got slower. But it isn't that slow, as in it isn't annoying, but should I be worried? What should I do?

The first thing to do would be take and post up a screen capture of the Crystalinfo window.

The 'Caution' message could be to do with any of various issues and the guys here who know their stuff (unfortunately my knowledge of 'stuff' is a bit limited) will need to see all the content before passing comment.

pewe said:

The first thing to do would be take and post up a screen capture of the Crystalinfo window.

The 'Caution' message could be to do with any of various issues and the guys here who know their stuff (unfortunately my knowledge of 'stuff' is a bit limited) will need to see all the content before passing comment.

Click to expand...

Sorry I can't post a screenshot. But I just set the value of "Reallocated sectors count" to 0 and the status is now good. How does reducing the value from 1 to 0 change the health status to Good?

Hopefully this helps, well this is the details of the scan.

ID Cur Wor Thr RawValues(6) Attribute Name
01 100 100 _62 000000000000 Read Error Rate
02 100 100 _40 000000000000 Throughput Performance
03 212 100 _33 000E00000001 Spin-Up Time
04 _98 _98 __0 000000000EC5 Start/Stop Count
05 100 100 __5 000000020010 Reallocated Sectors Count
07 100 100 _67 000000000000 Seek Error Rate
08 100 100 _40 000000000000 Seek Time Performance
09 _94 _94 __0 000000000B0B Power-On Hours
0A 100 100 _60 000000000000 Spin Retry Count
0C _98 _98 __0 000000000EBA Power Cycle Count
B7 100 100 __0 000000000000 Vendor Specific
B8 100 100 _97 000000000000 End-to-End Error
BB 100 100 __0 000000D90000 Reported Uncorrectable Errors
BC 100 100 __0 000300040000 Command Timeout
BE _57 _38 _45 00001C2C002B Airflow Temperature
BF _91 _91 __0 0000000009FC G-Sense Error Rate
C0 100 100 __0 000000220022 Power-off Retract Count
C1 _93 _93 __0 000000011BB1 Load/Unload Cycle Count
C4 100 100 __0 000000000002 Reallocation Event Count
C5 100 100 __0 000000000000 Current Pending Sector Count
C6 100 100 __0 000000000000 Uncorrectable Sector Count
C7 100 100 __0 000000000000 UltraDMA CRC Error Count
DF 100 100 __0 000000000000 Load/Unload Retry Count

Hopefully this helps, these are the details:

ID Cur Wor Thr RawValues(6) Attribute Name
01 100 100 _62 000000000000 Read Error Rate
02 100 100 _40 000000000000 Throughput Performance
03 212 100 _33 000E00000001 Spin-Up Time
04 _98 _98 __0 000000000EC5 Start/Stop Count
05 100 100 __5 000000020010 Reallocated Sectors Count
07 100 100 _67 000000000000 Seek Error Rate
08 100 100 _40 000000000000 Seek Time Performance
09 _94 _94 __0 000000000B0B Power-On Hours
0A 100 100 _60 000000000000 Spin Retry Count
0C _98 _98 __0 000000000EBA Power Cycle Count
B7 100 100 __0 000000000000 Vendor Specific
B8 100 100 _97 000000000000 End-to-End Error
BB 100 100 __0 000000D90000 Reported Uncorrectable Errors
BC 100 100 __0 000300040000 Command Timeout
BE _57 _38 _45 00001C2C002B Airflow Temperature
BF _91 _91 __0 0000000009FC G-Sense Error Rate
C0 100 100 __0 000000220022 Power-off Retract Count
C1 _93 _93 __0 000000011BB1 Load/Unload Cycle Count
C4 100 100 __0 000000000002 Reallocation Event Count
C5 100 100 __0 000000000000 Current Pending Sector Count
C6 100 100 __0 000000000000 Uncorrectable Sector Count
C7 100 100 __0 000000000000 UltraDMA CRC Error Count
DF 100 100 __0 000000000000 Load/Unload Retry Count

What really happens when I change the value from 0-1 other than the status changing from Good to Caution? Should I really change the value from 0 to 1? What happens?

Also if the status is Caution it says reallocated sectors count: 131088

Also what value should I leave it on? 0 or 1?

Also how does my hard disk look from the details I posted?

ElusiveNinja said:

pewe said:

The first thing to do would be take and post up a screen capture of the Crystalinfo window.

The 'Caution' message could be to do with any of various issues and the guys here who know their stuff (unfortunately my knowledge of 'stuff' is a bit limited) will need to see all the content before passing comment.

Click to expand...

Sorry I can't post a screenshot. But I just set the value of "Reallocated sectors count" to 0 and the status is now good. How does reducing the value from 1 to 0 change the health status to Good?

Click to expand...

How to post a screenshot-

http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials/2598-screenshots-files-upload-post-eight-forums.html

I already posted the details of the scan though.

ElusiveNinja said:

pewe said:

The first thing to do would be take and post up a screen capture of the Crystalinfo window.

The 'Caution' message could be to do with any of various issues and the guys here who know their stuff (unfortunately my knowledge of 'stuff' is a bit limited) will need to see all the content before passing comment.

Click to expand...

Sorry I can't post a screenshot. But I just set the value of "Reallocated sectors count" to 0 and the status is now good. How does reducing the value from 1 to 0 change the health status to Good?

Click to expand...

By setting the "Reallocated sectors count" from a 1 ( true ) to a 0 ( false ) what you are effectively doing is turning off sector reallocation checks so it no longer counts against the disk health checks. If you set it back to a 1 it will probably again go back to a Caution Status.

Also if the status is Caution it says reallocated sectors count: 131088

Click to expand...

This is the issue. When the system has an issue with an sector ( reading or writing ) it reallocates that sector to another area on the disk. This means that your disk is starting to fail. I would backup all data and or make a disk image backup and get a new drive then restore the image and or data.

Short answer. You disk drive is starting to fail. Backup and get a new one asap.