Solved HDD coming up with caution warnings in crystaldiskinfo

I have a Toshiba Satellite C660-220, and it has been running very inconsistently for the last few months, 1 day it'll be fine the next it will be really slow. In another thread I was told to download crystaldiskinfo and see if there was anything wrong with my HDD, when I did downloaded it and ran the test, I got warnings in the current pending sector count, and reallocated sector count, categories. does this mean that my hard drive is dying or is this normal for a hard drive of 2 years old?

"Warnings" are never good. I'd prepare for the worst personally. Back up everything you can. Start getting your recovery media ready if you haven't already. Everything you would need for a new install. Even if your drive lasts a few more years you should have all this anyway, just be more vigilant than normal.

indianacarnie said:

"Warnings" are never good. I'd prepare for the worst personally. Back up everything you can. Start getting your recovery media ready if you haven't already. Everything you would need for a new install. Even if your drive lasts a few more years you should have all this anyway, just be more vigilant than normal.

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I think I'll just get a new HDD to save the time messing, so I can just put all my data on before this one dies.

Having pending sector count, and reallocated sector count readings from SMART are not a sure sign of impending failure. These are normal and HHD's are made with extra sectors for remapping. There have been statistical studies made using SMART data from large drive arrays. Results show the drives showing a high count of pending and reallocated sectors have a 39% higher risk of failure than drives that do not. A drive can be in perfect health one day and fail the next. I think users can over react the SMART data.

I have a lap top drive that had a few "pending" sectors. I used CCleaner to write zeros to all empty sectors, this repaired all pending sectors, restored the drive to 100% health and it has remained that way. I believe the problem was caused by the lap tops fan failing, causing the drive to over heat. SMART shows a max temp of 63*C, much to high for a HHD.

No mater the condition of the drive, keeping a current backup and even a spare drive handy is a smart procedure.