Motherboard indicates imment SMART HDD failure...

but CrystalDiskInfo reports all is well...

I realize this post is short on specifics, but I would appreciate some general troubleshooting ideas.

e.g.:

1. Is CDI a reliable tool? If not, what would you suggest?
2. Could the bios on the MB be at fault? Would a bios update be of any help? Specifically, has anyone seen any value from a MB bios update that cleared falsely reported SMART info?

I will say that I tested the HD in an external USB enclosure which was connected to my laptop. I have not run CDI on the desktop in which the HD is installed. The desktop DOES boot into Windows, but given the negative report from the motherboard, I didn't want to run the HDD excessively.

I will note that it was late in the day when this computer came in so I have only spent about 15 minutes on it so far. My first move in the morning will be to backup the user data to a known good drive and then proceed with my troubleshooting.

Any relevant comments/advice/help would be appreciated!

Chris

whs said:

If you can, I would make an image. Then you can easily replace that drive.

The point is that I don't want to replace the drive if the motherboard is incorrectly reporting SMART errors that can't be replicated by HDD diagnostic software.

I already said that I would be backing up the user data as my next step.

Chris

Ok, digging into this a little further, I see with Hard Disk Sentinel that Attribute 184 End to End Error Count is flagged as a major problem. Interestingly, CrystalDiskInfo returns the same value but does not flag it as a problem.

After doing some research, it appears that this could be an issue with the hard drive itself OR and issue with bad or failing cabling.

With the drive connected via external USB to my laptop, I made a note of the error count and then ran chkdsk /f on the drive. It ran with no reported errors. I rechecked the error count and it remained unchanged.

Therefore, my initial thought is that there is a cabling issue in the desktop that needs to be rectified. Unfortunately it appears that this attribute cannot be reset to zero, so it is always going to 'trip' the smart detection on the desktop. I'll have to see if my customer can live with that.

Chris