Do I have a Bad sector problem?

tgbyhn10111 · 15 Sep 2007 at 12:36

Hi

I may have a problem on my 3 month old drive. I did a surface scan with HDTune and it said there were no bad sectors. Then I ran Hard Disk Sentinal www.hdsentinel.com and it said the following:

"The drive found 1 bad sectors during its self test. There are 1 weak sectors found on the disk surface. They may be remapped any time in the later use of the disk. It is recommended to examine the log of the disk regularly. All new problems found will be logged there.

No actions needed."

I don't like the sound of the above but the software says the health of the drive is 98%. What gives?

The drive is a ST3320620AS.

Should I return it for replacement? It was sold to me with a 5 year seagate warranty but ****** screwed up and the drive only has a 1 year seagate warranty but ****** said they would honour 5 year warranty themselves. Concerned that I have been given a graded drive that is more likely to fail within 5 years.

Thanks

basmic · 15 Sep 2007 at 13:00

Personally, I'd RMA the drive.

Oh, and edit the competitor out.

tgbyhn10111 · 15 Sep 2007 at 13:06

Would they swap it given a surface scan on hdtune says it's fine?

I assume the tech guys will test it and say it's fine as it is working. Don't want to pay for drive to be shipped there and back unless I know it's going to be exchanged.

I don't understand how one utility can say it's OK but the other says there is a problem.

By "competitor" do you mean the link to hdsentinel? I don't see how that is a competitor to overclockers, is it really against forum rules to post that? I'll remove if it is.

Thanks

PiKe · 15 Sep 2007 at 13:15

Theres a built in redundancy for a certain amount of sectors, maybe this is what hdsentinal is picking up on, as otherwise you would never know until there were more bad sectors than spares.

tgbyhn10111 · 15 Sep 2007 at 13:18

PiKe said:
Theres a built in redundancy for a certain amount of sectors, maybe this is what hdsentinal is picking up on, as otherwise you would never know until there were more bad sectors than spares.

So is this normal or something to be worried about?

I have heard a few strange noises coming from my pc 3 or 4 times and it coincided with drive access on this drive (which is a backup drive so not used very often)

PiKe · 15 Sep 2007 at 13:24

Strange like what? Does it sound like failed reads? Find out what sector this weak sector is supposedly in and find which file is occupying it.

tgbyhn10111 · 15 Sep 2007 at 13:28

It was just louder than normal drive access, quite a bit louder but I can't be certain it was coming from that drive as there are also 2 160gb seagates next to it that have my vista installation on them.

What tool can I use to find out were the bad sector is and check it out?

basmic · 15 Sep 2007 at 13:36

Your best bet is to goto Seagate's website, and download SeaTools for DOS or Windows from here.

Run the Quick/Basic test. If no errors show, then proceed to the Long/Advanced/Thorough test. If there any problems with the drive, they will show up there. If you do get an error, you'll be given an error code to RMA the drive with - take note of this, and use it when RMA'ing the drive.

tgbyhn10111 · 15 Sep 2007 at 13:39

basmic said:
Your best bet is to goto Seagate's website, and download SeaTools for DOS or Windows from here.

Run the Quick/Basic test. If no errors show, then proceed to the Long/Advanced/Thorough test. If there any problems with the drive, they will show up there. If you do get an error, you'll be given an error code to RMA the drive with - take note of this, and use it when RMA'ing the drive.

Thanks. I am trying that tools as we type. It wouldn't do the quick or basic test for some reason so I'm doing the long test at the moment.

If it passes the long test does that mean seagate are happy with the drive then?

basmic · 15 Sep 2007 at 13:59

tgbyhn10111 said:
Thanks. I am trying that tools as we type. It wouldn't do the quick or basic test for some reason so I'm doing the long test at the moment.

If it passes the long test does that mean seagate are happy with the drive then?

It means the tool is happy.

If I were you, run the DOS program after running the Windows version. I'd trust it more, TBH.

tgbyhn10111 · 15 Sep 2007 at 14:24

Just finished the long generic test and the drive passed. I'll give the dos version a go and post back later. I'd like to try a good, non seagate tool really to see what an unbiased opinion is.

It seems that there is a problem with a bad sector but the seagate firmware is hiding the problem by not using that sector...is that right?

Is this normal for a 3 month old drive?

I am concerned that a bad sector so early in the drives life may indicate the drive will become prone to bad sectors sooner rather than later. Either there was a problem when they created the surface or there's a bit of debris flying around in there.

Presumably I can't RMA if seatools says it's ok

IAmATeaf · 15 Sep 2007 at 15:37

Even new drives have bad sectors which are mapped away. There are spare sectors in case a bad sector develops and the drive should just remap it away without you knowing. There would be problems if the list of bad sectors continue to grow to the point where there are no more spare sectors to remap too.

If SeaTools finds nothing then Seagate won't do anything with the drive. I'd continue to use the drive but make sure everything is backed up just in case.

tgbyhn10111 · 15 Sep 2007 at 19:39

IAmATeaf said:
Even new drives have bad sectors which are mapped away. There are spare sectors in case a bad sector develops and the drive should just remap it away without you knowing. There would be problems if the list of bad sectors continue to grow to the point where there are no more spare sectors to remap too.

If SeaTools finds nothing then Seagate won't do anything with the drive. I'd continue to use the drive but make sure everything is backed up just in case.

OK Thanks. Trouble is it's my system backup drive. I'm not sure I trust it now.

Are there any good utilities that will alllow me to monitor the bad sectors (show me how many there are and perhaps where they are?)

There is something else that concerns me about this drive, HDTune reports the following smart info (0A) Spin retry Count is highlighted in yellow with the following values:

Current 100
Worst 100
Threshold 97
Data 0
Status OK

Should I worry about this?

BTW: my PSU is a OCZ Stealthxstream 700Watt so there should be plenty of power