HDD smart info still good

[wizardofid]

Hi guys

Just need to confirm HDD is still good, the last 3 weeks the HDD performance was dismal, was my main steam drive and was nearly full as a result.I checked out the the smart info and it mentioned there is 5 pending sectors and 2 offline sectors.Was unable to get all the data from the drive, as the copying would crawl to 1mb/s on some files I am not waiting around 19 hours for some thing to copy.I had an older copy of the steam library as a back up, so only updates and a couple of new games missing for that back up.

So got the WD tool and did a full erase 4 odd hours to complete, did a quick test folder copy of 90gigs and no issues speed was around a 100mb/s also copied the folder again to make sure there wasn't any issues no problems either, I see with the full erase it has cleared the pending sectors, the offline sectors remained the same and but there is no reallocated sectors, which is good news.

Not sure about the rest of the smart info, if some one could give it a glance and provide feedback it would be nice.If every thing checks out I am just going to use it as a none essential storage device, till I replace it for good measure or use it again as the main steam drive and just update the back up from it.

Thanks

 

[sajunky]

I see with the full erase it has cleared the pending sectors, the offline sectors remained the same and but there is no reallocated sectors, which is good news.

Problems were very serious with number of UNC's and delays of reading sectors. You can't trust this hard drive.

C6 parameter officially means that 2 sectors had been marked permanently bad, these sectors will be not re-used for relocations anymore. If we are going to believe it, it also means that all other setors (previously bad) will be used as they were good.

The read/write error rate seems very high, I don't know whether it reflects your recent backup operation. Run SMART long test in captive mode, see whether it drops.

In any case you can only use this hard drive for temporary storage or movies and other stuff you can re-download again.

The true condition of the drive would give scanning the entire surface for delays with MHDD.

 

[wizardofid]

Problems were very serious with number of UNC's and delays of reading sectors. You can't trust this hard drive.

C6 parameter officially means that 2 sectors had been marked permanently bad, these sectors will be not re-used for relocations anymore. If we are going to believe it, it also means that all other setors (previously bad) will be used as they were good.

The read/write error rate seems very high, I don't know whether it reflects your recent backup operation. Run SMART long test in captive mode, see whether it drops.

In any case you can only use this hard drive for temporary storage or movies and other stuff you can re-download again.

The true condition of the drive would give scanning the entire surface for delays with MHDD.

Yeah did that what I could see from raw read and error rate when I looked up smart info is that it's vendor specific and information isn't necessarily useful.

I just finished filling up the drive completely and neither of those two values changed, I checked they are still default values, nor did any sectors information change.That said I did have a power failure a few weeks back, while writing data to the disk, which could have caused issues, tested with crystal disk no read of write problem quite possible was just a fluke of some kind.

Previously used a drive with offline uncorrectable sectors for years even had 2 reallocated sectors, eventually donated the drive, that drive is still working

I think those 5 pending sectors caused the headache and those pending sectors went away with the full format, that said the drive isn't entirely full it's 94% full and 60gigs short from where it was before the issues.....

Will keep an eye on it any ways, just going to use it as the steam drive already have that backed up so no issues if that goes.

Thanks mate.

edit
I checked out information from blackblaze and they also pointed out read and write error rate is vendor specific information so that information isnt useful.Black blaze mentioned drives with uncorrectable sector or two doesn't fail all that often nor is it any indication that a drive will fail soon.
They did mention when seek error rate goes above zero it is a good indication that the drive will fail soon.

The only smart issue is the uncorrectable 2 sectors the rest are all in range, drive is safe to use for none essential stuff

 

[sajunky]

I checked out information from blackblaze and they also pointed out read and write error rate is vendor specific information so that information isnt useful.

Parameter #1 is used internally during background SMART operation by Seagate. You can ignore it on Seagate, but not on WDC.

WDC drives suffer from firmware corruption during power cuts. Such drives may behave very unpredictable, continuously replacing good sectors with weak sectors from the spare sectors pool. If your file is not accessed for few months, firmware can assume this area is less important.

If you have scanned the surface with MHDD immediately after failure, you could see whether all bad sectors were located in the one area or spreaded around. When located in one area, it would indicate heads touching the surface. When UNC's were spread around, it is indicative of weak heads or corrupt firmware.

After rewriting the surface this information is lost unfortunately. Now you can only keep the drive running for few weeks or months and occasionally scan with MHDD for delays. It will give early detection of problems (before data is permanently corrupt).

 

[wizardofid]

thanks mate will keep an eye on it