SMART... confusion

[Spyros78]

I recently came across a weird situation with one of my drives, which concerned of smart status. For 2 days in a row, since PC startup, i kept receiving warning from BIOS that the drive's status is bad and in OS also, through 3 different programs up to Win 7 itself through error reporting, i kept being notified about the "spin retry count", which usually indicates mechanical or electrical problem.

For those 2 days, the value i had was same as threshold, 60. Now that this value has exceeded, although lower is considered better, BIOS has stopped alt to notify and smart status report in OS is always.....OK !

Of course in my worry to avoid lose data, i already bought another drive to backup my backup, but i'm still confused about the current values of all smart attributes of smart. I'd like few more opinions from people who have dealt somethin similar and know about the matter.

Below u can see 3 reports for yourself.

 

[fireberd]

I had a drive that the BIOS flagged as failing. I pulled it out and placed it in an external USB case. It was still showing the SMART status as failing in SPECCY. I reformatted the drive and now the SMART status is "GOOD" and the BIOS is not flagging it as failing.

 

[Megahertz07]

Schedule a check disk: chkdsk c: /f

 

[Digerati]

I agree to run chkdsk only I would use the /r switch. The /r does the same thing as (includes) /f, but also locates bad sectors and attempts to recover any lost data.

Note that on a large disk (especially if problems found) chkdsk can take a very long time (even more than 24 hours) and appear to be hung up. Just let it run, it will finish, eventually.

Note too that SMART errors indicate potential problems giving users the opportunity to (1) make sure they have good backups of their data and (2) give users time to buy a replacement disk BEFORE the drive fails completely. The thing is, potential does not mean inevitable or impending doom. I have seen disks with SMART errors last for years. And others for just a couple days.

You might also (or instead of running chkdsk) visit the drive maker's website and download and run their diagnostics utility. They all have one. If the drive is still under warranty and fails their own diagnostics, they typically don't hesitate to offer a RMA.