smart test issue

[Mike532]

Hello! I bought a new hdd drive and it has values of reallocated sector count and uncorrectable sector count both 252. As far as I understand they should be 0. What does it mean?

 

[Golden]

These are usually signs of a potential failure of the hard disk. Are there any obvious signs that the disk is having issues (clicking noises, unresponsive system, constant disk light activity)? Ensure you make regular backups, and consider replacing this disk.

Count of reallocated sectors. When the hard drive finds a read/write/verification error, it marks that sector as "reallocated" and transfers data to a special reserved area (spare area). This process is also known as remapping, and reallocated sectors are called "remaps". The raw value normally represents a count of the bad sectors that have been found and remapped. Thus, the higher the attribute value, the more sectors the drive has had to reallocate. This allows a drive with bad sectors to continue operation; however, a drive which has had any reallocations at all is significantly more likely to fail in the near future.[2] While primarily used as a metric of the life expectancy of the drive, this number also affects performance. As the count of reallocated sectors increases, the read/write speed tends to become worse because the drive head is forced to seek to the reserved area whenever a remap is accessed. If sequential access speed is critical, the remapped sectors can be manually marked as bad blocks in the file system in order to prevent their use.

The total count of uncorrectable errors when reading/writing a sector. A rise in the value of this attribute indicates defects of the disk surface and/or problems in the mechanical subsystem.

S.M.A.R.T. - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

 

[pscowboy]

Many drives come from the manufacturer with bad sectors and reallocated sectors.
This does not necessarily mean failure. Those will have been isolated from use.

Failure comes from a steady progression of reallocation.

Download the DOS-based diagnostic iso from the maker, and burn to cd. Boot with it and perform the long test. This will tell you if the hd is viable.

Put the drive in use and monitor its "health" by downloading and installing Acronis Drive Monitor. Small footprint and quick results. Run once a week. It will give you a disk health percentage. If it steadily loses % points, replace. Amongst my clients, there are a half dozen spinners that have been stable at 79% to 94% with no further issue.

 

[Mike532]

Is this drive faulty or they all now are like that? Is there correlation between the two attributes? Can it be reliable when it has problems with mechanical system?

 

[Layback Bear]

Their is no program that can be run to repair a mechanical failure with a hard drive. If it is suspected of mechanical problems I would back the information up and then check on the availability of warranty.
Hard drives are useless if they can't be trusted.