Current Pending sector count

as the subject states, lve noticed a couple show up (l only ran the program that picked them up for amusement as l was using it for another drive after being recommended to trying [crystaldiskinfo] and thought for amusement ld trying running it on my main system).

2 drives seem to show up as having the issue, if lm reading the values right one drive has 3 (with loads of prior zeroes) and the other 1 in the raw values (the the one that has 1 in its values also has 1 within the uncorrectable sector count).

l have run scandisk to recover bad sectors and it didnt find anything, tho l wish there was a program which would quickly search the correct area and fix it without having to clear the drive (which is currently not an easy thing to do considering l dont have much backup space or time to spare to do any long scans like zero filling).

nothing to worry about really.
once you're hitting a reallocated sector count of say 20 it's time to swap the drive.

you can run seatools if you're still concerned.

interesting to know, tho l did run the windows scan for bad sectors but it didnt find any which was slightly strange, main reason l found out was because l was testing another drive (one connected to my xbox which l was having issues with).

"Current ending Sector" is actually a very important SMART value. Typically a healthy drive should remap all pending sectors without any manual intervention from the OS/User. You should run manufacturer's diagnostic tool to force the remapping of pending sectors.

- For WD drives, run a short test with "WD Data lifeguard Diagnostics" for DOS. This will auto remap any pending sectors.

WD Support / Downloads / SATA & SAS / WD Blue / SE / SE16 (SATA II)

- For Seagate drives, run "Long Test" with "Seatools for DOS" version. At the end of test, choose the option "Repair this and all remaining" to fix any defective sectors found by the test.

SeaTools for DOS and Windows - How to Use

Small value for the "Reallocated Sector Count" or "Pending Sector Count" isn't a serious problem but you should periodically check this. The potential issue is that there is only a limited number of sectors available for this purpose and once reached errosr cannot be corrected. It is also a warning that there may be some underlying cause (usually unknowable) which may make the problem worse.

When the drive detects an error during a write operation it can immediately remap to a sector reserved for this purpose. No data is lost. But if the error occurs during a read operation the drive cannot remap the sector becasue it doesn't know what the data is supposed to be. The drive makes a not of these and will remap them when or if the sector is later written to or if it can be successfully read. The "Pending Sector Count" is the count of these pending sectors.

Be sure you have a current backup of all important files. You should have this even for a new drive with no issues. Any drive can fail at any time with no warning or apparent cause. There are other causes for data loss as well. You need to be prepared when (not if) something happens. Having no backups is asking for trouble.

well lve ran a short DST test on both drives (only one notes a fail) specifically the one that only notes pending sector counts (the one the raw data for crystal disk info notes as 3) the other drive didnt pick anything up not even on smart tests which the samsung did both on long and short tests.

can l use seatools for the samsung drive? for that matter if l use the windows version will that also fix sectors? none of the drives with notes of bad sectors are OS drives and are only generally accessed when lm sorting backups.

just an update, l ran the short test within seatools (dos) and where problems were consistently found in the windows version the dos version found nothing which is very strange...

suffice to say, lm going to wait till l can leave the drive for longer (and contemplate getting a new one regardless), tho l wish there was a program that could scan for bad sectors within windows and fix them like seatools, l could leave that running without going into dos while lm asleep, after all its not like the drive l want to run it on is an OS one (in fact my os is on a SSD).

can l use seatools for the samsung drive?

"Seatool" can test all manufacturer's disks but it will only show the repair option if the disk in test is either "Seagate" or "Maxtor". "Smasung" has it's own tool ( Estool or something ). A working download for it is hard to find since Smasung stopped making hard drives ( now Seagate owns their facilities ). Fortunately, the good old "UBCD" includes the tool.

Ultimate Boot CD - Overview


In theory, a small value of "Current Pending Sector" is not a problem but in reality it may became a serious issue if the pending sector resided on the OS partition - especially the sector in question is used to store critical OS components like registry or a critical structure of NTFS file system (part of MFT etc ). I have seen several examples of a single bad sector corrupting entire file system (NTFS will be detected as "Unknown" or "RAW" in disk management). If "C" drive is the corrupted one, trying to boot OS will result in "BSOD 7B Unmountable boot volume". Usually force remapping the pending sector and running CHKDSK from a WinPE will fix this.

You can also use "HDAT2" to force remapping of bad sectors. It's a brilliant program which can even cut the size of a hard drive. It's also included in the UBCD package.

Fix your PC: How to Fix Bad Sectors in your Hard Disk

Make sure to backup all important data as an insurance before trying to repair bad sectors .


Edit :

I didn't noticed your reply. I would recommend scan the disk with HDAT2. It is a very reliable program and i used it several times successfully. Just make sure to unplug all the drives including SSD before begin the test. I don't recommend using any Windows program as Windows uses it's own API to access disks while DOS based tools can access the disk directly and doesn't even rely on BIOS interrupt routines. Testing or fixing a mechanical hard drive will give better results when done from pure DOS.

hmm, well given lm not using either of the drives that note bad sectors as "OS drives" l guess l can live with the issue and given the prices of the drives ld be likely to replace with l guess l can live with backing up the most important files.

to be quite honest, the 2 giving off sector errors (one of which seatools says is fine via short tests despite crystaldisk info saying otherwise) mostly have crap on them however the most important things (xbox stuff, drivers etc as well as the video files on the other drive have either been burned to disk already or backed up or waiting to be burned when they are worth a DVDs size of content either way l usually backup the most important files pretty much as l get them).

A "Short Test" is less likely to detect surface defects as it usually won't do a surface scan. That is why there is long test which will test every single LBA on the disk. Anyway since the data is already backed up and you are planning to replace the drive sooner or later, fixing them is not necessary.