Replace HDD with Reallocated Sectors Count flagged?

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I'm setting up an older Laptop with Win 10. The OS is on an SSD and the data is on a 500GB HDD. Crystal Disk is telling me the health status is "Caution" for the data HDD, everything seems OK with the disk but to play it safe I'm going to replace it.

It has Reallocated Sectors Count flagged, and nothing else.

Current 100
Worst 100
Threshold 30.

I have another 500GB HDD sitting here that Crystal Disk states is "GOOD". Nothing is flagged but the numbers for what was flagged with the other HDD are the same.

Current 100
Worst 100
Threshold 30.

What's the story? Both drives have a little under 2500 hours on them. Should I just bounce for another HDD? This machine is fully backed up and not used for anything important, I'd rather use the money for something else if I can get away with using the HDD that's "GOOD".

Thanks!
 
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I would download / trust the diag software from the HDD manufacture vs using 3rd party tools.

I would go for SSDs as you replace HDDs, much more reliable.
 
What it the RAW value for the Reallocated Sectors Count (and Reallocated Event Count ) ?
If it is not zero - I wold replace the HDD
 
I'd replace it, drives are cheap. Loosing data sucks and not knowing if you are sitting on a ticking time bomb isn't good to start out with.
 
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Originally Posted by DzoG20
What it the RAW value for the Reallocated Sectors Count (and Reallocated Event Count ) ?
If it is not zero - I wold replace the HDD


Thanks for the replies. It is 000000000001, the drive I have on hand to replace it with is 000000000000. I'd rather not spend the money on a new SSD drive. I can get a NIB WD Black in 500GB for under $40 delivered. But if the drive I have on hand is good, as I mentioned I'd rather spend the $$ elsewhere. My data is backed up several times to different computers, and an alternate location.
 
If you have a good back-up plan and can spend a day restoring and don't mind the possibility of having to fix it at a later date, then run what you have. If it were me I would sell of the affected drive as used and use a new one report 0 defects. Just me though.
 
Originally Posted by StevieC
If you have a good back-up plan and can spend a day restoring and don't mind the possibility of having to fix it at a later date, then run what you have. If it were me I would sell of the affected drive as used and use a new one report 0 defects. Just me though.


The replacement drive I have on hand has 0 defects according to Chrystal Disk. The OS is on an SSD drive. Data can be restored in about an hour. As I mentioned I have several backups and also in an alternate location. In fact this machine contains one of 6 back ups.
 
Reallocated sector count is an okay proxy for pending failure.
As far as I can tell, all the promise of SMART fell flat. (A manager/engineer pushed this as a 'big thing' way back, so I'm sensitive to it.)

The enterprise storage vendors eventually made custom software to time the milliseconds needed to commit a write, and made predictive failure algorithms based on that. They also do regular data scrubbing.

If you weren't the type to do real-time timing, then reallocated sector count is a weak 2nd place trophy substitute.
I've seen a few new HDDs with non-zero counts, so a HDD having a very low number isn't necessarily bad,
but the count doesn't increment until a write is attempted, fails several times, and a reallocation then takes place.
A HDD can feel horrible, but if you're only reading from a sector, and not writing, then it won't reallocate the sector.

If you want to use it, run a complete disk wipe on it (something that writes a difficult pattern, then reads), which takes a couple of days.
If the reallocated sector count increases at all, toss it, as I've tried this and seen the count increase over and over again, once it starts.
If it's over 10, toss it. It'll be a bit slow with a few files.
 
Originally Posted by spackard
Reallocated sector count is an okay proxy for pending failure.
As far as I can tell, all the promise of SMART fell flat. (A manager/engineer pushed this as a 'big thing' way back, so I'm sensitive to it.)

The enterprise storage vendors eventually made custom software to time the milliseconds needed to commit a write, and made predictive failure algorithms based on that. They also do regular data scrubbing.

If you weren't the type to do real-time timing, then reallocated sector count is a weak 2nd place trophy substitute.
I've seen a few new HDDs with non-zero counts, so a HDD having a very low number isn't necessarily bad,
but the count doesn't increment until a write is attempted, fails several times, and a reallocation then takes place.
A HDD can feel horrible, but if you're only reading from a sector, and not writing, then it won't reallocate the sector.

If you want to use it, run a complete disk wipe on it (something that writes a difficult pattern, then reads), which takes a couple of days.
If the reallocated sector count increases at all, toss it, as I've tried this and seen the count increase over and over again, once it starts.
If it's over 10, toss it. It'll be a bit slow with a few files.



I'd be interested in trying that just for the sake of experimentation/learning. Is there some kind of freeware I can get to do that? Thanks.
 
Some drives fail shortly after having reallocated sectors while some live on for years and years. I'd say scrap it and buy a new drive. Mechanical HDDs are so dirt cheap. Even better, upgrade to a solid state drive. I have a fleet of SSDs of various brands, Intel, Kingston, Crucial, Samsung, 0 failures. Some of them with insanely high writes due to being used in servers. Unless you buy some WingDingChinaGeneric SSD you can't beat the reliability of SSDs.
 
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I've had an old crusty samsung brand 2tb drive that said caution 5 years ago..
since its just my torrent drive I dont really care if it fails or I lose data.

numbers dont seem to be increasing. It is very slow when its over 75% full sometimes dipping under 20MB/sec

baddrive.jpg
 
Thanks. ^ I copied the data to the spare 500GB HDD I had. It checks out OK with Crystal Disk. The laptop in question is about 9 years old now, and I couldn't justify the money for a replacement HDD when I had one laying around. I'll probably buy a new Laptop toward the end of the year. I had no idea what any of the Crystal Disk numbers meant in the real world. I learned a lot from this thread.
 
Freeware for wiping a HDD: I use DBAN.
This webpage looks like it walks a person through how to use it (at a beginner's level)
https://www.lifewire.com/how-to-erase-a-hard-drive-using-dban-2619148

DoD 5220.22-M three-pass: Overwrite the data with a value, then with the inverse of that value, then with a random value, verifying the write after each step. The first two wipes theoretically pull the magnetic field fully one direction, then fully the other, eliminating any residue of the original value.
 
Originally Posted by Garak
demarpaint has Linux, as well, so if swapping hard drives around, he always has some secure wipe/delete utilities available there, too.

I still run Linux in two computers, I never considered using their utility on the HDD. I will look into it as well. Thanks.
 
Yes, there's a "secure-delete" package in Debian, Ubuntu, Mint, and other variants, right off the top of my head. I don't know if it's installed by default or not, but trivial to install and easy to use commands.
 
Originally Posted by WagonWheel
...
I would go for SSDs as you replace HDDs, much more reliable.

I don't agree. SSDs don't having moving parts like HDDs, but many SSDs fail early, and most HDDs used every day last many years past their prime without a hiccup.

And data stored on SSDs spontaneously degenerates over time, whereas data written to a HDD will still be good many years later unless the HDD is abused by impacts or magnetic fields.

SSD performance is unmatched by HDD. This is why people use SSD for the OS, and HDD for storage of real data.
 
This thread is timely for me. I got a promotion email from Newegg offering "refurbished" WD 2 TB enterprise drives for $42 (plus a $10 mail in rebate). I've never bought a refurbished HDD, but this seemed like a no brainer. After my purchase I found out that these are beyond being simply refurbished but actually used drives from server farms, many manufactured in 2012. Yikes!

I figured I'd do a SMART check on it when it arrived and if reasonably OK, restrict it's use to that of a backup of a backup. I ran across an interesting article that describes The 5 SMART stats that actually predict drive failures.

Also, as I did an inventory of my boneyard HDD's I found a couple of old WD Raptor drives (measly 36 GB) that may fetch a few bucks on ebay, so I began looking at testing and wiping them. I was all prepared to use something like DBAN when I came across an article that references Peter Gutmann suggesting a simple one-pass write of 0's or 1's is sufficient: You only need to wipe a disk once to securely erase it
 
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