From: kimiraikkonen on
Most of the computer users, including professionals, don't look at or
take care SMART's "reallocated sectors count" value, they usually take
care full / surface scans against data loss unless SMART reaches to a
critical level with alerting.

I have e-mailed Seagate to ask about the topic title, they haven't
replied with a satisfactory answer so far. Maybe they know or not. Who
knows?

Even sometimes, i hear contact noise, i detailed it them, they said:
if the drive passes long test, i shouldn't worry. As i'm not an
amateur, i usually watch SMART values to see what goes on.

My other SMART values are those (latest):

Are they any value that should make me concerned? (no pending or
uncorrectable sectors)

Attribute Name Threshold Value
Worst Raw value
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 (01) Raw Read Error Rate 34 63
53 2778681
3 (03) Spin Up Time 0
70 70 0
4 (04) Start/Stop Count 20
100 100 692
5 (05) Reallocated Sectors Count 36 98
98 98
7 (07) Seek Error Rate 30
81 60 158998323
9 (09) Power-On Hours 0
93 93 6591
10 (0A) Spin Retry Count 97 100
100 0
12 (0C) Device Power Cycle Count 20 98
98 2602
194 (C2) Temperature 0
21 51 21
195 (C3) Hardware ECC recovered 0 61
53 2778681
197 (C5) Current Pending Sector Count 0 100
100 0
198 (C6) Uncorrectable Sector Count 0 100
100 0
199 (C7) UltraDMA CRC Error Count 0 200
200 0
200 (C8) Write Error Rate (Multi Zone Error Rate) 0 100
253 0
202 (CA) Data Address Mark Errors 0 100
253 0

Sorry, if the lines slide out of the page, i use Google to access
newsgroups, don't know how you get here :-(

Thanks.
From: Rod Speed on
kimiraikkonen <kimiraikkonen85(a)gmail.com> wrote:

> Most of the computer users, including professionals, don't
> look at or take care SMART's "reallocated sectors count"
> value, they usually take care full / surface scans against data
> loss unless SMART reaches to a critical level with alerting.

Anyone who does it like that aint a 'professional'.

The MUCH more viable approach is to monitor the raw
SMART data over time and consider what changes mean.

> I have e-mailed Seagate to ask about the topic title, they haven't replied
> with a satisfactory answer so far. Maybe they know or not. Who knows?

Its more likely that they just gave up on your rather fractured english.

> Even sometimes, i hear contact noise, i detailed it them, they said:

And this is a good example of rather fractured english
where it isnt at all clear what you are trying to say.

> if the drive passes long test, i shouldn't worry.

Thats rather superficial advice, because it wont pick up increasing numbers
of reallocated sectors which is certainly an indication that the drive is dying.

> As i'm not an amateur, i usually watch SMART values to see what goes on.

> My other SMART values are those (latest):

> Are they any value that should make me concerned? (no pending or uncorrectable sectors)

No, the other values are fine given that its a seagate drive. Seagate drives
do have those rather high seek error rate and hardware ECC recovered numbers.

> Attribute Name Threshold Value
> Worst Raw value
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 1 (01) Raw Read Error Rate 34 63
> 53 2778681
> 3 (03) Spin Up Time 0
> 70 70 0
> 4 (04) Start/Stop Count 20
> 100 100 692
> 5 (05) Reallocated Sectors Count 36 98
> 98 98
> 7 (07) Seek Error Rate 30
> 81 60 158998323
> 9 (09) Power-On Hours 0
> 93 93 6591
> 10 (0A) Spin Retry Count 97 100
> 100 0
> 12 (0C) Device Power Cycle Count 20 98
> 98 2602
> 194 (C2) Temperature 0
> 21 51 21
> 195 (C3) Hardware ECC recovered 0 61
> 53 2778681
> 197 (C5) Current Pending Sector Count 0 100
> 100 0
> 198 (C6) Uncorrectable Sector Count 0 100
> 100 0
> 199 (C7) UltraDMA CRC Error Count 0 200
> 200 0
> 200 (C8) Write Error Rate (Multi Zone Error Rate) 0 100
> 253 0
> 202 (CA) Data Address Mark Errors 0 100
> 253 0

> Sorry, if the lines slide out of the page,

The correct terminology is wrap.

> i use Google to access newsgroups, don't know how you get here :-(

You can see that from the post headers.


From: Folkert Rienstra on
Rod Speed wrote in news:5q15o5Ftnqd3U1(a)mid.individual.net
> Franc Zabkar <fzabkar(a)iinternode.on.net> wrote:
> > On 13 Nov 2007 07:34:38 GMT, Arno Wagner <me(a)privacy.net> put finger
> > to keyboard and composed:
> >
> > > I once had a Maxtor (in a cluster of compute servers)
> > > that was incredible slow and has about 1100 reallocated sectors.
> > > This thing was dying pretty fast (had been dropped and it
> > > took some weeks to develop problems). The thing was that the
> > > SMART status still read good, i.e. above the threshold.
> > > At that time I started monitoring the raw reallocated sector
> > > count and installed email notification on changes of that..
> > >
> > > Some vendors are extremely optimisticc with regard to SMART
> > > thresholds. Kind of makes the SMART status alone pretty
> > > worthless. No wonder so many people are asking in this group
> > > for help interpreting SMART data.
> > >
> > > Arno
> >
> > I retired my drive after it started growing bad sectors on a daily
> > basis. The last bad sector couldn't be reallocated and showed up as an
> > unreadable software file. Sure the drive could have been "fixed" by
> > replacing the file and allowing SMART to reallocate the affected
> > sector, but I didn't want to have to do this on a regular basis. So I
> > can understand why some people replace a drive at the first hint of
> > trouble.
> >
> > Twenty years ago I was servicing the old Control Data storage module
> > drives with removable disc packs. If you started to see read errors,
> > you could clean the disc heads with alcohol to remove any oxide
> > buildup on the head pads. This contamination was the result of minor
> > head-to-disc contact and affected the aerodynamics of the head. Once
> > you started to see this problem, then you could very quickly end up
> > with a head crash.

> And modern hard drives dont have the particular problem.

Nonsense.
From: Folkert Rienstra on
Franc Zabkar wrote in news:ngnmj3hj045n52gduimpua7spfjn5p97mf(a)4ax.com
> On Wed, 14 Nov 2007 09:23:45 -0800, kimiraikkonen
> <kimiraikkonen85(a)gmail.com> put finger to keyboard and composed:
>
> > On Nov 14, 12:55 pm, Arno Wagner <m...(a)privacy.net> wrote:
> > > Previously kimiraikkonen <kimiraikkone...(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > Arno, Rod (no quatiton mark :-) ), Franc,
> > > > Thanks you for following this topic and keeping replying.
> > > > So, as overall when you looked at SMART values, i want to summarize
> > > > what i got in that topic?
> > > > 1- There are 98 reallocated bad sectors but there's no unallocated as
> > > > a threat of data loss? Right?
> > >
> > > The 98 sectors have been moved out of the way. Not risk from them.
> >
> > So, they were containing data before they've got reallocated. Right?
>
> Probably, although you could have encountered some bad sectors from an
> unused portion of the disc by running Scandisk with a thorough surface
> scan.
>
> <snip>
>
> > How much sector will my drive be allowed to reallocate? (eg: What
> > about for a modern 40gb drive ? )
>
> I posted some stats for my 13GB Seagate HD. If my assumptions are
> correct, then each percentage point reflects a loss of approximately
> 40 sectors. In my case that means that my drive can reallocate 2560
> sectors before it drops below the threshold, after which it should
> return a bad SMART status.
>
> If I were you I would backup and retire your drive. Once it starts to
> develop bad sectors, then the numbers can only grow. You need to ask
> yourself how important your data are.
>
> > That's why the full / surface scan utilities are there. They report
> > "bad" , really "bad" sectors which can't be allocated by firmware of
> > HDD. Right?
>
> AFAIK, all bad sectors can be reallocated, if enough spares are
> available. The problem in this particular case is that the drive will
> not reallocate an uncorrectable bad sector until it is sure that the
> OS no longer wants the data contained within it. The way that the OS
> signals that the data in this sector are no longer of any consequence
> is by writing to it. As soon as the drive is asked to write to this
> bad sector,

> it reallocates a spare and writes the new data to it instead.

Not necessarily, it may reuse the same sector.

>
> In my case I have had a "pending" sector for almost the entire life of
> the drive. This is because I ran Scandisk with a thorough surface scan
> after FDISKing and formatting my drive. Scandisk found one bad sector
> and marked is as such in the FAT. Hence the OS has avoided writing to
> it ever since and the "pending" status has remained.
>
> - Franc Zabkar
From: Folkert Rienstra on
Arno Wagner wrote in news:5q1j4gFtblivU3(a)mid.individual.net
> Previously kimiraikkonen <kimiraikkonen85(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Nov 14, 12:55 pm, Arno Wagner <m...(a)privacy.net> wrote:
> > > Previously kimiraikkonen <kimiraikkone...(a)gmail.com> wrote:

[bigsnip]

>
> > That's why the full / surface scan utilities are there. They report
> > "bad" , really "bad" sectors which can't be allocated by firmware of
> > HDD. Right?
>
> They report bad sectors that were not reallocated yet.

> The disk can allways reallocate sectors,

Not on reads alone.

> but sometimes only with dataloss

Nope.

> or after several tries.

Always, on reads. Even has to cross a limit for that.

>
> > > > 5- Though a drive has "reallocated sectors", if it can read every data
> > > > (checking with several disk reading utilites), it doesn't have a
> > > > unallocatable / unfixable bad sectos which are the reasons of real
> > > > data loss.
> > >
> > > The reallocated sectros are recognized _and_ corrected problems.
> > > These sectors will not cause problems in the future. Other
> > > sectors may go bad, but if a complete surface scan does not
> > > show any, all data is in sectors that are fine or at least look
> > > like it. In rare cases a sector can work with some data, but be
> > > defect with other data.

> > > Very rare with today's disks, due to
> > > heavy use of error correcting codes.

There is always a breaking point somewhere.
Otherwise bad sectors would not exist.

> > >
> > > You still may want to do a complete surface scan regularly,
> > > so that the disk can recognize sectors slowly going bad
> > > in time and can rescue the data in them. I run such a test
> > > every 14 days automatically, but once every 1-2 months should
> > > do fine. You can make that a part of your standard backup
> > > procedure.
>
> > I usually do it if i record important data. But still "none" bad
> > sectors have been reported by surface scan of Seatools.
>
> > So, can i say i don't have any bad sectors present at the moment?

> No.

Yes.

> But if you have bad sectors, they cannot be detected by a read only test.

Babblebot, utterly clueless as always.

> And the probability of such sectors is pretty small.
>
> Arno