Solved Crystaldiskinfo giving Caution warning on SSD (C5)

[Protozoa]

Crystaldiskinfo giving Caution warning on external drive

When you hover over it says "current pending sector count: 1".

The drive is about 9 months old Samsung M3

Should I be worried about this?

 

[King Arthur]

You say that you are talking in regards to a 128GB SSD from Crucial, but the screenshot of CrystalDiskInfo refers to a 1TB HDD from Seagate that is connected via USB.

With all due respect, are you sure you have your information straight? It would appear you are a little confused.

 

[Protozoa]

Oh youre right. I was looking at it as being a C drive instead of Celsius and didn't seem to notice the abnormal amount of space it had..

I panicked and posted right away since my boot drive has very important files. Facepalm to the max. I fixed the post, though I can't seem to fix the thread title. Sorry about that.

 

[essenbe]

Hello Protozoa, I would also suggest if you have important files, to always keep a backup of them. That can save you a lot of grief if your drive goes out or the operating system gets corrupted and you can't get in.

 

[King Arthur]

With regards to that particular Seagate, I'd keep a close eye on it. Sector reallocations aren't by themselves a clear sign of death for the HDD, but it's a sign that the HDD may be on its way out. Keep backups of any important files on that drive, or even better a backup/copy of the entire drive, and be prepared to replace it if the sector reallocations get worse.

How old is that Seagate HDD anyway? I notice it only has 211 hours of uptime but it's also been power cycled 92 times as well. A HDD is most likely to experience failures and death either when they are new or when they get old and things start to wear out.

EDIT: Ah, sorry. I missed the part where you mentioned the HDD (Samsung HDD?) was 9 months old. Please disregard my question regarding its age.

 

[Protozoa]

Yeah sad part is this is the HDD I'm using for backups (haven't gotten around putting everything on it). The sector count hasn't gotten any higher. Could this be connected to case where I force shut down the PC while the external drive is plugged in or no?

 

[King Arthur]

A sector reallocation occurs whenever a HDD can't write to a given sector. When a HDD can't write to a certain sector, the HDD's firmware internally changes the address to one of many unused sectors that the HDD has in reserve for situations like this, thus sector "reallocation". Incidentally, not being able to read from a certain sector does not trigger a sector reallocation, only failed write operations.

While sector reallocations aren't themselves a certain sign of impending death, it is a possible sign that the HDD may be on its last legs. Sector reallocations are usually the result of the magnetic layer on the physical platters wearing out (and consequently prohibiting write operations), or possible problems with the read/write heads.

Sector reallocations can in some cases be fixed by a low-level formatting of the drive, but as far as I'm aware it's a hit-or-miss depending on the underlying cause.

Personally, I treat any HDDs that have had sector reallocations as untrustworthy and unreliable. I've had a number of HDDs that experienced sector reallocations, and one of them got upwards of 10,000~20,000 reallocations rendering the drive entirely unstable and unusable for normal use.

It's fortunate that the sector reallocation count for your HDD hasn't increased, but as I said before I would keep a close eye on it and be prepared to replace it if the situation worsens. Chances are the cost of buying a new HDD is far cheaper than running the risk of data loss.

 

[Protozoa]

Alright that makes sense. Yesterday I found I had installed the driver software that came with the drive and upon doing a quick test all it would do was to give me a message to RMA it... Ah well. I usually have good luck with my drives but I guess there's a first for everything.