Seagate ST3500418AS, showing Reallocated Sectors

[Frank Williams]

Hard Disk Sentinel shows it as 95% good, 103 days of use.

Now has 5 Reallocated Sectors

The last one No.4 was in November 2009 and now one today..

But I did get a Blue Screen what trying to transfer XP Dater using the WIN 7
Windows Easy Transfer tool, did show up as a USB problem, with copying to
this drive, but that was the day before, I then decided to use a 4G USB stick
and all was OK, 2.4G of data transferred.

Drive is about 9 months old and SMART no longer lists any thresholds for that
drive..


Do I need to worry and what is the limit given to get a replacement..?

Thanks

 

[Arno]

Hard Disk Sentinel shows it as 95% good, 103 days of use.

Now has 5 Reallocated Sectors

The last one No.4 was in November 2009 and now one today..

Not a lot. Probably perfectly healty drive. Keep in mind that
a reallocated sector is a successful error recovery.

But I did get a Blue Screen what trying to transfer XP Dater using
the WIN 7 > Windows Easy Transfer tool, did show up as a USB problem,
with copying to this drive, but that was the day before, I then
decided to use a 4G USB stick and all was OK, 2.4G of data
transferred.

I would suspect that it was actually an USB problem.

Drive is about 9 months old and SMART no longer lists any
thresholds for that drive..

What do you mean?

Do I need to worry and what is the limit given to get a replacement..?

Not yet. Keep an eye on the reallocated sectors, but 5 is fine,
especially if this is an external drive. If the number of reallocated
sectors is slowly increasing (say <= 1/Month), the drive is likely
fine. If pending sectors show up or you get larger burtst in
reallocated sectors (say >10 two or three times), then there likely is
a problem and you may want to look for a replacement or identify the
problem.

You may want to look into that USB error though, maybe the cable is
bad. It is also possible that the externel PSU of the drive has a bit
of a problem, which cpuld cause both the USB error and the reallocated
sectors.

This is a bit of a black art, but if the drive allways reallocates
successfully (reallocated but no pending sectors), then there
is no data loss and it may well be a problem with the operating
environment and not the drive itself.

Arno

 

[Rod Speed]

Hard Disk Sentinel shows it as 95% good, 103 days of use.

Its never got that stuff right.

Now has 5 Reallocated Sectors

The last one No.4 was in November 2009 and now one today..

Its clearly dying.

But I did get a Blue Screen what trying to transfer XP Dater using
the WIN 7 Windows Easy Transfer tool, did show up as a USB problem,
with copying to this drive, but that was the day before, I then decided
to use a 4G USB stick and all was OK, 2.4G of data transferred.

Likely just a symptom of the dying drive.

Drive is about 9 months old and SMART no longer lists any thresholds for that drive..

Do I need to worry

Yes, its dying.

and what is the limit given to get a replacement..?

There isnt one.

 

[Rod Speed]

Thats all just plain wrong. It shouldnt be producing new reallocated sectors.

 

[Grant]

Hard Disk Sentinel shows it as 95% good, 103 days of use.

Now has 5 Reallocated Sectors

The last one No.4 was in November 2009 and now one today..

But I did get a Blue Screen what trying to transfer XP Dater using the WIN 7
Windows Easy Transfer tool, did show up as a USB problem, with copying to
this drive, but that was the day before, I then decided to use a 4G USB stick
and all was OK, 2.4G of data transferred.

Drive is about 9 months old and SMART no longer lists any thresholds for that
drive..


Do I need to worry and what is the limit given to get a replacement..?

Something seems wrong, perhaps high temperature?

Grant.

 

[Dave Doe]

Hard Disk Sentinel shows it as 95% good, 103 days of use.

Now has 5 Reallocated Sectors

The last one No.4 was in November 2009 and now one today..

But I did get a Blue Screen what trying to transfer XP Dater using the WIN 7
Windows Easy Transfer tool, did show up as a USB problem, with copying to
this drive, but that was the day before, I then decided to use a 4G USB stick
and all was OK, 2.4G of data transferred.

Drive is about 9 months old and SMART no longer lists any thresholds for that
drive..

What do you mean by that? And is it relevant? You just want to know if
SMART is reporting the drive as failed in some way.

Do I need to worry and what is the limit given to get a replacement..?

Re 5 reallocated errors - who did that? - the OS? or the disk (and
you've seen in in SMART)?

Point being, no modern HDD should have any failures from the OS's
perspective. If you start getting bad sectors (as reported by chkdsk
and the like), the drive is fuked. All modern drives have internal
error correction, and if that "overflows" - and the OS has to deal with
it - as said, the drive is fuked. Get it replaced. *Particularly* if
you are getting more and more bad sectors - it's a time bomb.

 

[Frank Williams]

What do you mean by that? And is it relevant? You just want to know if
SMART is reporting the drive as failed in some way.


Re 5 reallocated errors - who did that? - the OS? or the disk (and
you've seen in in SMART)?

Point being, no modern HDD should have any failures from the OS's
perspective. If you start getting bad sectors (as reported by chkdsk
and the like), the drive is fuked. All modern drives have internal
error correction, and if that "overflows" - and the OS has to deal with
it - as said, the drive is fuked. Get it replaced. *Particularly* if
you are getting more and more bad sectors - it's a time bomb.

Its NOT Bad Sectors its Reallocated Sectors, if you scan the drive there are
No bad Sectors I never ever use DOS chkdsk as its very buggy and can kill
hard drives.

The SMART Data no longer lists any thresholds for that drive but does with
all the others, that's using Hard Disk Sentinel, must be a Smart Bug or a Hard
Disk Sentinel one.


On the Other Ext Seagate it list 36 for the Threshold Reallocated Sectors


The problem is that most SMART monitors do not work on USB drives.

 

[Frank Williams]

Its never got that stuff right.



Its clearly dying.


Likely just a symptom of the dying drive.



Yes, its dying.


There isnt one.

Your advise is 500% total Rubbish you know less than a Dead Rat, your advise
in the pass has caused me to loose a drive with your untested suggestions.


Puts me in you Kill file as your Name makes me puke..

 

[eyes]

Hard Disk Sentinel shows it as 95% good, 103 days of use.

Now has 5 Reallocated Sectors

The last one No.4 was in November 2009 and now one today..

But I did get a Blue Screen what trying to transfer XP Dater using the WIN 7
Windows Easy Transfer tool, did show up as a USB problem, with copying to
this drive, but that was the day before, I then decided to use a 4G USB stick
and all was OK, 2.4G of data transferred.

Drive is about 9 months old and SMART no longer lists any thresholds for that
drive..


Do I need to worry and what is the limit given to get a replacement..?

Thanks

Its a tough one. Most vendors only accept returns if a manufacturer's
drive test says it is failing (which is usually a SMART threshold
check). I'm not sure that a count of 5 would be enough.

Keep an eye on it, but to be fair, you should keep an eye on all of your
drives.. you never know when they are about to fail.

Anecdotal evidence:

1. I have a 200GB drive with around 20 reallocated sectors. It got them
near the beginning of its life and hasn't changed after 5+ years of use.
2. I have 2 Seagate 1.5TB drives. These were purchased 1 year ago, and
currently show 70 and 107 reallocated sectors. Seatools says they are
still okay. I'm not sure I feel the same - although I guess these big
drives have a lot of sectors, so those counts are a very small
percentage of the total.

 

[Rod Speed]

Your advise is 500% total Rubbish you know less than a Dead Rat,

This is the clown that cant even work out the significance of new reallocated sectors...

your advise in the pass has caused me to loose a drive with your untested suggestions.

Another lie.

Puts me in you Kill file

I'm not childish enough to use one.

as your Name makes me puke..

Your problem, as always.

 

[Rod Speed]

Its a tough one. Most vendors only accept returns if a manufacturer's
drive test says it is failing (which is usually a SMART threshold
check). I'm not sure that a count of 5 would be enough.

Keep an eye on it, but to be fair, you should keep an eye on all of
your drives.. you never know when they are about to fail.

Anecdotal evidence:

1. I have a 200GB drive with around 20 reallocated sectors. It got
them near the beginning of its life and hasn't changed after 5+ years
of use. 2. I have 2 Seagate 1.5TB drives. These were purchased 1 year ago, and
currently show 70 and 107 reallocated sectors. Seatools says they are
still okay. I'm not sure I feel the same - although I guess these big
drives have a lot of sectors, so those counts are a very small
percentage of the total.

Those are obscene numbers of reallocated sectors.

That isnt necessarily due to the drive dying tho, when you have so
many on multiple drives, its much more likely to be due to something
external to the drive like the temperature or the power supply etc.

 

[Dave Doe]

Its NOT Bad Sectors its Reallocated Sectors, if you scan the drive there are
No bad Sectors I never ever use DOS chkdsk as its very buggy and can kill
hard drives.

Oh it's YOU Woger. Had I known, I would not have replied.

 

[eyes]

Those are obscene numbers of reallocated sectors.

Not sure I would call that obscene. On these drives 1 sector = 512
bytes. 107 x 512 bytes = ~54K. 54K in 1,500,000,000K is probably not
significant to worry about.

That isnt necessarily due to the drive dying tho, when you have so
many on multiple drives, its much more likely to be due to something
external to the drive like the temperature or the power supply etc.

Exactly, although I have had a 500GB Seagate and a Samsung 1.5TB in the
same case. Those drives are not reporting any reallocated sectors. Of
course that doesn't mean their firmwares handle reallocated sectors
differently and only report in SMART when they hit an internal threshold.

 

[Yousuf Khan]

Its NOT Bad Sectors its Reallocated Sectors, if you scan the drive there are
No bad Sectors I never ever use DOS chkdsk as its very buggy and can kill
hard drives.

The SMART Data no longer lists any thresholds for that drive but does with
all the others, that's using Hard Disk Sentinel, must be a Smart Bug or a Hard
Disk Sentinel one.

Yeah, that is kinda weird. Are you saying that this entire column is
missing when you view it on HDS for this drive, but not for others? Or
are you saying that the column is still there, but every row in it are
zeroes?

You might want to ask the HDS developers this question, they'll probably
ask you to run and send their Test Report. It would be interesting to
find out what this is about in any event.

In the meantime, trust but verify. Use a different utility on the drive.
Run HDD Scan, and see what it reports.

HDDScan – free HDD test utility with USB flash and RAID support
http://hddscan.com/

On the Other Ext Seagate it list 36 for the Threshold Reallocated Sectors


The problem is that most SMART monitors do not work on USB drives.

Seagate's SeaTools seem to work on a lot of USB drives. And HDD Scan
seems to work too. At one time, HD Sentinel was the be-all-end-all of
USB-based SMART reporting, but there are others now.

I still like HD Sentinel for its health and performance ranking system,
although its weighting criteria seems to be a bit too conservative. I
have one old 200GB IDE drive that was given 100 days to live, but that
was almost 2 years ago. I've also now converted the drive into a SATA
drive, and it's had no problems since. HDSent has steadily been
increasing its health rankings since then; it's gone from a 40% health
ranking, up to 49%, and now up to 76% and its estimated life is now 336
days.

Yousuf Khan

 

[Rod Speed]

eyes wrote

Rod Speed wrote

Not sure I would call that obscene.

They are anyway.

On these drives 1 sector = 512 bytes. 107 x 512 bytes = ~54K. 54K in 1,500,000,000K is probably not significant to
worry about.

Wrong. You shouldnt see more than a very small number
of reallocated sectors on any modern hard drive.

Exactly, although I have had a 500GB Seagate and a Samsung 1.5TB in
the same case. Those drives are not reporting any reallocated sectors.

Particular drives can see quite different temperature regimes even when
in the same case, most obviously with a drive that is on the end of the
stack or one which is in the airflow from a fan on the end of the stack
or with drives that are in the 5.25" drive bay stack in a multidrive housing.

Bet you will find that the SMART temp is much worse with the
drives that have those obscene numbers of reallocated sectors.

Of course that doesn't mean their firmwares handle reallocated sectors differently and only report in SMART when they
hit an internal threshold.

Smart doesnt do it like that with reallocated sectors.

 

[Jason]

Hard Disk Sentinel shows it as 95% good, 103 days of use.

Now has 5 Reallocated Sectors

The last one No.4 was in November 2009 and now one today..

But I did get a Blue Screen what trying to transfer XP Dater using the WIN
7
Windows Easy Transfer tool, did show up as a USB problem, with copying to
this drive, but that was the day before, I then decided to use a 4G USB
stick
and all was OK, 2.4G of data transferred.

Drive is about 9 months old and SMART no longer lists any thresholds for
that
drive..


Do I need to worry and what is the limit given to get a replacement..?

Thanks

If you're lucky you will have zero but it is just as likely that over the
life time the odd one will turn up. I would say it gets critical when
numbers increase rapidly especially as the drive gets older.
A few at the beginning of a drives life are probably due to the drive
settling in however this beginning period may be longer for a USB drive that
is not always plugged in.

 

[Rod Speed]

Jason wrote

If you're lucky you will have zero

You dont need to be lucky to get zero reallocated sectors, thats what most have.

but it is just as likely that over the life time the odd one will turn up.

Thats wrong too.

I would say it gets critical when numbers increase rapidly

Even just keeps increasing is evidence of a problem.

especially as the drive gets older.

You dont actually see that much anymore.

A few at the beginning of a drives life are probably due to the drive settling in

Have fun explaining the physics of that.

however this beginning period may be longer for a USB drive that is not always plugged in.

Even sillier.

 

[Frank Williams]

Yeah, that is kinda weird. Are you saying that this entire column is
missing when you view it on HDS for this drive, but not for others? Or
are you saying that the column is still there, but every row in it are
zeroes?

Its fixed its self after a Reboot..

 

[Frank Williams]

If you're lucky you will have zero but it is just as likely that over the
life time the odd one will turn up. I would say it gets critical when
numbers increase rapidly especially as the drive gets older.
A few at the beginning of a drives life are probably due to the drive
settling in however this beginning period may be longer for a USB drive that
is not always plugged in.

As its a Back up drive its away's plugged in, but I can turn it Off and On
with USB Safety Remove software.

 

[Frank Williams]

Yeah, that is kinda weird. Are you saying that this entire column is
missing when you view it on HDS for this drive, but not for others? Or
are you saying that the column is still there, but every row in it are
zeroes?

Its fixed its self after a Reboot..