My ST31500341AS started to give smart errors..

[Kaori]

I never had this problem with a HDD before, every time I boot windows after a few minutes a warning message appears saying my HDD is about to fail.

Used a program called AIDA64 when this problem started to occur 2 weeks ago and the reallocated sectors count was 30, now its 1 ?

I checked this forum a bit and downloaded the crystaldiskinfo program to see what's going on, hope some of you guys can help me or if I really should just buy another drive to be safe..

here's a screenshot:

 

[Red Falcon]

Your power on count is almost 3000?!
How the hell did you manage that? Wow!
Did you power cycle your system like 8 times a day for the last 2 years? Oh my...

 

[houkouonchi]

Your power on count is almost 3000?!
How the hell did you manage that? Wow!
Did you power cycle your system like 8 times a day for the last 2 years? Oh my...

I am guessing you ment power-cycle count not power-on. I am guessing its caused by the sleep function on the HD/OS.

Anyway your disk has 4,089 re-allocated sectors. I generally replace disks once they have over 50-100 re-allocated sectors.

Your drive is badly failing. You should buy a new drive or RMA (advanced replacement) with seagate and copy over the data to the new disk ASAP.

 

[kalston]

I am guessing you ment power-cycle count not power-on. I am guessing its caused by the sleep function on the HD/OS.

I always thought HDDs hated being powered on and off too much, and I always disable sleep functions because of this.

 

[drescherjm]

Time to RMA the drive. This one looks to me like it is going out soon. If there is anything valuable on this drive get it out soon.

I recommend using ddrescue (available on linux livecds - sysrescuecd for example) to make a bit for bit copy of all readable sectors to a brand new drive as soon as possible.

http://www.forensicswiki.org/wiki/Ddrescue

 

[Kaori]

ouch.. thought it wasn't that bad, time to grab another hdd then, think I can't RMA this one because the warranty was only 2 years..

what easy to use software should I use to copy my files to the new drive ? (checked the DrRescue but seems too complicated <_<)

oh, I only power on the computer one or two times a day, must be because of the power saving feature I disabled an year ago..

thanks for the help everyone

 

[drescherjm]

You have 4089 bad sectors with 6 sectors that the drive lost data on. There is most likely a mechanical or head problem that is causing this and from what I have seen of other drives (at work where I have 200+ drives and rma 10 to 20 a year) with similar numbers you only have a few hours / days left before the entire drive becomes unreadable.

 

[drescherjm]

checked the DrRescue but seems too complicated

If you know linux well enough to know how the devices for disks are organized (/dev/sda /dev/sdb instead of C: d: ..) it is very easy. However if you do not it can be a little difficult. I do not know of a windows equivalent of this however.

 

[Kaori]

yeah, already ordered a new one, hopefully arrives before the weekend have all my games movies and music on this drive, will be a pain to install everything again !

I do remember 3 months ago the system didn't find the hdd on boot a few times but after that it worked fine..

good thing windows is on the other sane drive

If you know linux well enough to know how the devices for disks are organized (/dev/sda /dev/sdb instead of C: d: ..) it is very easy. However if you do not it can be a little difficult. I do not know of a windows equivalent of this however.

will norton ghost do ?

 

[drescherjm]

will norton ghost do ?

I do not think so. The problem is how it handles unreadable part of the disk. I do not have recent experience with this but in the past I believe the imaging would terminate on the first error.

 

[Aesma]

Since it isn't the OS drive, you can just make a regular copy. If you use supercopier2, it will tell you when there is an error (without resetting the copy), you can then skip the file and know it is lost. I would unplug it until you can make the copy.

And the warranty is 3 years, so RMA it, and use the replacement to make a 1:1 copy of the new drive.

 

[drescherjm]

Since it isn't the OS drive, you can just make a regular copy. If you use supercopier2, it will tell you when there is an error (without resetting the copy), you can then skip the file and know it is lost. I would unplug it until you can make the copy.

And the warranty is 3 years, so RMA it, and use the replacement to make a 1:1 copy of the new drive.

Fully agreed.

 

[Kaori]

Since it isn't the OS drive, you can just make a regular copy. If you use supercopier2, it will tell you when there is an error (without resetting the copy), you can then skip the file and know it is lost. I would unplug it until you can make the copy.

And the warranty is 3 years, so RMA it, and use the replacement to make a 1:1 copy of the new drive.

the shop I bought it from said 2 years.. but indeed it says 3 years on their page, should just I contact seagate ?

also is formatting the drive enough before sending it to RMA ?

 

[drescherjm]

You can always check if your drive is under warranty by trying to process an RMA.

http://support.seagate.com/customer/en-US/warranty_validation.jsp?form=1

Fill in your serial number and see if it says your drive is still covered.

also is formatting the drive enough before sending it to RMA ?

You can do a full format or better yet run DBAN on the drive.

http://www.dban.org/

At work I usually do not bother and trust that seagate will wipe the platters before fixing the drive and sending it to another customer..

 

[Kaori]

You can always check if your drive is under warranty by trying to process an RMA.

http://support.seagate.com/customer/en-US/warranty_validation.jsp?form=1

Fill in your serial number and see if it says your drive is still covered.



You can do a full format or better yet run DBAN on the drive.

http://www.dban.org/

At work I usually do not bother and trust that seagate will wipe the platters before fixing the drive and sending it to another customer..

it looks like the drive has 5 years of warranty, so that shop must replace the drive then, they probably wanted to avoid the trouble >_<

thanks