Help understanding SMART result

fish99

fish99

fish99

Soldato
Joined
19 May 2005
Posts
5,053
Location
Doncaster
Hi,

I'm investigating a problem on my dads PC with WoW (just WoW, nothing else has issues) occasionally crashing, and have come up blank with virus scans, CPU temps (E6750, under 55 degrees running 2x superPI for 10 mins) and GPU temps (GTX460, 72 degrees in FurMark after 10 mins), but I did find some SMART problems on the HDD.

As you can see it's a WD 240 GB 7200 rpm and I think that's 14K reported hours on it.

The question is - how serious are these problems, and is this drive still healthy?

smart.JPG


Cheers,
Simon.
 
It looks pretty healthy apart from the 26 bad sectors which have been 'swapped out' for spare sectors. If these bad sectors occurred recently there's a good chance there's more on the way, alternatively they could have occurred years ago and not be a problem.

I'd suggest a backup then running a full scan of the disk with WD's data lifeguard diagnostic tool. This will access all sectors of the disk and find any dodgy ones that haven't already been found through normal use of the disk. Then check the SMART data again - if the reallocated or pending sector counts have gone up it may mean the disk has a developing problem.
 
wonko said:
It looks pretty healthy apart from the 26 bad sectors which have been 'swapped out' for spare sectors. If these bad sectors occurred recently there's a good chance there's more on the way, alternatively they could have occurred years ago and not be a problem.

I'd suggest a backup then running a full scan of the disk with WD's data lifeguard diagnostic tool. This will access all sectors of the disk and find any dodgy ones that haven't already been found through normal use of the disk. Then check the SMART data again - if the reallocated or pending sector counts have gone up it may mean the disk has a developing problem.
Click to expand...

How'd you work out 26? I can see only one reallocated event count + reallocated sector, unless i'm missing something with the A in the raw values. Wouldn't worry too much about 1 but if it keeps growing in number i'd look to rma etc..
 
Justintime said:
How'd you work out 26? I can see only one reallocated event count + reallocated sector, unless i'm missing something with the A in the raw values. Wouldn't worry too much about 1 but if it keeps growing in number i'd look to rma etc..
Click to expand...

Hi, reallocation sector count raw data is 1A (hex) which is 26 in decimal. I think the reallocation event count of 1 means that the disk has only attempted one set of reallocations (meaning presumably that 26 pending sectors were remapped in one go). BTW, the WDC warranty check says warranty expired in 2010 :(
 
Thank you.

Do you mean the extended scan or the write zeros scan with the WD tool, because I'd rather not have to backup the drive (TBH I don't even know how to backup a whole drive).
 
fish99 said:
Thank you.

Do you mean the extended scan or the write zeros scan with the WD tool, because I'd rather not have to backup the drive (TBH I don't even know how to backup a whole drive).
Click to expand...

Don't do the 'write zeros', this would definitely wipe all your data :eek:!

I meant the extended scan - this shouldn't do any damage to the files but there are no guarantees so a backup is highly recommended. Obviously it's the personal / irreplaceable photos, documents, etc. that are most important - any hard drive can die at any time without warning so I'd strongly suggest you start with a backup to an external hard drive, DVDs, pendrive etc. of the stuff you can't afford to lose before going any further.
 
Right, ran the WD extended test and it reported no problems. I checked the SMART results after and nothing has changed, so it looks like everything is OK. I have no idea when the bad sectors happened.

TBH it's most likely just WoW being buggy or some WoW mod causing the problem. Thanks again.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom