How Long Does My HDD Have ?

Discussion in 'PC Hardware' started by ceo54, Feb 21, 2018.

  1. ceo54

    ceo54 MDL Addicted

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  2. Joe C

    Joe C MDL Guru

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    #2 Joe C, Feb 21, 2018
    Last edited: Feb 21, 2018
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  3. No one can say exactly how much time. Judging from your SMART screenshot, the drive looks OK, but if you hear clicking sounds then it's very bad. Mechanical failure is imminent. If you have important data there move the immediately.
     
  4. MrG

    MrG MDL Expert

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    #4 MrG, Feb 21, 2018
    Last edited: Feb 21, 2018
    I had a Western Digital HDD dying warning this month, so I replaced it
    It was my 1TB storage drive so I just moved everything over to another 1TB WD drive I had.

    Main rig storage drive dying.jpg


    edit: The above was the warning I got during PC start-up.
    The HDD seemed to be working fine, no noises but I didn't want to gamble loosing all my data.
     
  5. Joe C

    Joe C MDL Guru

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    When they go, they go. Sometimes it makes no rhyme or reason as to the longevity of some hard drives, of course if you have a laptop and drop it then that'll shorten any platters life
     
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  6. ceo54

    ceo54 MDL Addicted

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  7. ceo54

    ceo54 MDL Addicted

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    Ohh! That's bad news :( I wish I could buy more time, I could really get myself a very good machine if I wait till Augest. Okay I'll make some arrangements. Thanks for the help.
     
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  8. ceo54

    ceo54 MDL Addicted

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    I didn't get any warning of sorts infact when I did SMART from the dos startup, my HDD passed it. I will do it again after the current session and report back. Thanks for the reaction.
     
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  9. ceo54

    ceo54 MDL Addicted

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    No physical damage here. I don't know if all the failing HDD's make that noise. No matter how fast, it will still take atleast a week more before I'll be able to back everything up.
     
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  10. Joe C

    Joe C MDL Guru

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    bad sector = damage to the platter. Means that you had a bad unreadable area of your drive, and yes, it'll only get worse. Do Not Use your drive if you need to save any data on it. You should stop using this drive until you can back up any data you need
     
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  11. John Sutherland

    John Sutherland MDL Addicted

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    #11 John Sutherland, Feb 21, 2018
    Last edited: Feb 21, 2018
    Hello @ceo54 - If I were you, I wouldn't go into panic mode immediately and replace the drive. I would just start to monitor the drive's S.M.A.R.T. status on a regular basis. I say this because there is a significant difference between the Current Pending Sector Count (C5) and the Reallocated Sector Count (05). To explain:

    Data that is to be written to a hard drive is first stored in the drive's write buffer, which in your case is 8MB. The firmware finds 8MB of unallocated disk sectors to be used for the write operation, then performs the write. At this point the data exists in both the write buffer and on the physical disk. The firmware then performs a CRC checksum to verify that the data written to each sector on the disk is an exact match for the data stored in the write buffer. If there is a match, the write buffer is flushed and refilled to perform the next write, and the process repeats 8MB at a time until all of your data is written to disk.

    Here is where things go wrong: If the CRC checksum process finds the data on a particular sector does not match the data in stored the write buffer, that sector is flagged as "Pending" to failure and the data is written to a different sector. But the firmware does not give up on using this particular sector immediately.

    It will try over and over to use this particular sector, and keep a count of of failed writes. I can't say for certain what the threshold is, but when the number of failed writes reaches a certain point, the firmware completely gives up on using this sector, flags it as an unusable sector, replaces it with a new sector from the disk's reserved area, re-maps the drive, and changes the sector's status from "Pending" to "Reallocated". When this happens, you have to monitor the drive's S.M.A.R.T. status even more closely. If you see more the Reallocated Sector Count increase any further, you are at the point where you need to consider replacing the drive.
     
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  12. Enthousiast

    Enthousiast MDL Tester

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    If i hear my drive ticking and metal sounds, i would backup asap (i once lost 4.5TB of data before, because i was to late to take action).
     
  13. Joe C

    Joe C MDL Guru

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    It's impossible to say with any certainty how long your drive will last, but it's failure is in the near future
     
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  14. ceo54

    ceo54 MDL Addicted

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    Hi John, how have you been bud ? Thanks for all that information, really helpul. It's not the bad sectors that I worry about as I will soon abondon this drive but it's the clicking sound that worries me the most as the HDD may fail any minute.

    I will post when I get a new one. Until then you stay tight my friend.
     
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  15. ceo54

    ceo54 MDL Addicted

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    Wohh! $.5TB is hell lot of data. Sure thing to do. I've learnt the lesson. Thank you for participating in the thread.
     
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  16. ceo54

    ceo54 MDL Addicted

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  17. ceo54

    ceo54 MDL Addicted

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  18. TigTex

    TigTex MDL Senior Member

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    Hey, I work at computer repair and data recovery so let me give you an hint.
    You have 1 pending sector. That means that the checksum of that sector was somehow damaged and needs to be checked. You can run a full checkdisk with "chkdsk c: /r /f" (it should take 1 to 2 hours on that harddisk) and then recheck the status.
    -If the "pending" sector disappeared, great!
    -If you have more pending sectors, stop now and backup, your disk needs to be replaced ASAP!
    If the 1 pending sector is still there, you need to run a software called "hdat2" on pure MSDOS and do a "scan and repair bad sectors" (1 hour +/- ). It should detect and fix that bad sector and 2 things can happen:
    -The pending sector is now a reallocated sector (problem solved, you can have +/-2048 reallocated sectors and still have a working disk)
    -The sector is verified as good and your SMART status is now reported as healthy. Fixed!

    If you don't do nothing, every time the operating system reads something that's in that sector, your system will slowdown, hang or freeze.
     
  19. ceo54

    ceo54 MDL Addicted

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    Hi thank you for the solution. I'll follow it as soon as I backup my data.
     
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  20. mehdibleu

    mehdibleu MDL Expert

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    you're absolutely right, i had the same issue on one of my old hard drives, it worked great for about 2 years and then i noticed that all suddenly was working slow, opening folders, using the net, all these tasks became very slow, i checked the HD health with the same tool and told me that is was on caution status and started to deteriorate as the days and weeks went by until the system hangs as you said. i had to replace the hard drive, no other choice.