# Reallocated Sectors Count: Should I be worried?



## entropy13 (May 8, 2012)

According to CrystalDiskInfo, one of my drives is under "Caution", specifically because of Reallocated Sectors Count. It's currently at 99 (Raw value: 000000000033). Is failure imminent?


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## AlienIsGOD (May 8, 2012)

I have a WD Blue 1 TB that does the same thing, started a week after I bought it.  I would also like to know the implications of this.


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## Solaris17 (May 8, 2012)

i have a 1TB sammy F3 i think i got it years ago and it did this after about a month. the bigger the drive the more can happen. like new graphics cards the more sophisticated the easier they break. every HDD is alocated "extra space" in reserve for problems like this. that said while it can mean the drive is failing it depends on how fast it is finding sectors. which also depends on how much data you keep on it. my particular one has about 200gb left and the sector count hasnt gone up. but it does have bad ones and its been years. its still working fine and iv had no issue with any of the data on it.

bad sectors are going to happen. what you want to look for imo other then bad sectors is retry count. if that is incredibly high that means the drive is having problems reading/writing data. that could point to almost imminent failure.


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## lilhasselhoffer (May 8, 2012)

Every drive has the occasional defects in manufacturing.  These defects prevent reading/writing to a sector.  As a way to combat this, the sectors that are flagged as damaged are moved, or reallocated.  

As every drive series is different, sector reallocation is a poor indicator of drive health.  Some large drives don't have enough data (user submitted records of "good" drive information), so they default to the danger readings of much smaller drives.


In short, you should worry if reallocated sectors is increasing consistently.  If the number is constant after several boots, then it isn't a problem.  If it increases consistently then you should be worried.


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## Solaris17 (May 8, 2012)

lilhasselhoffer said:


> Every drive has the occasional defects in manufacturing.  These defects prevent reading/writing to a sector.  As a way to combat this, the sectors that are flagged as damaged are moved, or reallocated.
> 
> As every drive series is different, sector reallocation is a poor indicator of drive health.  Some large drives don't have enough data (user submitted records of "good" drive information), so they default to the danger readings of much smaller drives.
> 
> ...



you wrote that way better than i did.


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## lilhasselhoffer (May 8, 2012)

Solaris17 said:


> you wrote that way better than i did.



Much obliged.


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## CaptainFailcon (May 8, 2012)

disable head-parking if you have a WD green drive or early WD blue


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## W1zzard (May 8, 2012)

if you have a WD drive and that number keeps going up, or the drive shows hangs while accessing, RMA it.
WD offers to send you a drive before you send yours, so easy to transfer data


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## entropy13 (May 8, 2012)

I haven't really noticed until now, but the last time I ran CrystalDiskInfo it certainly isn't "Caution" for that drive because of Reallocated Sectors Count.

It's quite an old HDD already though, I bought it when I still had an i7 920 and a HD 4870.


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## Solaris17 (May 8, 2012)

entropy13 said:


> I haven't really noticed until now, but the last time I ran CrystalDiskInfo it certainly isn't "Caution" for that drive because of Reallocated Sectors Count.
> 
> It's quite an old HDD already though, I bought it when I still had an i7 920 and a HD 4870.



just watch it. no need to do it excessivly but a weekly check of the bad sector count should give you a yes or no within a few weeks.


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## AlienIsGOD (May 8, 2012)

So i checked my S/N and whatnot and it seems my drive IS still under warranty till Aug 2013.  Now the crappy (IMO) part.

First off its a Seagate drive, not a WD.  Secondly, they want some bullshit 2 inch thick foam rubber holder thing to accept warranty.  Where can i find these in Canada, and do I even need to use it or not?  http://www.reflexpackaging.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=103&Itemid=110  thats what they want to return the drive.


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## Kreij (May 8, 2012)

Just wrap it really good in bubble wrap (like 4-5 inches thick) and put it in a large box than they send it in.
I've never had a problem with them accepting an RMA if it was packaged well.

Make SURE you put a copy of the RMA information in with the package, and make sure the RMA number is written on the outside of the box (I usually write it on all six sides).


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## qubit (May 8, 2012)

entropy13 said:


> According to CrystalDiskInfo, one of my drives is under "Caution", specifically because of Reallocated Sectors Count. It's currently at 99 (Raw value: 000000000033). Is failure imminent?



You see stuff like that, you change the drive. End of. Hopefully it's still under warranty and you can rma it.

Hope you have a backup of the data on it? If not, do it, asap.

Good advice as usual, K.


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## AlienIsGOD (May 8, 2012)

So i called Seagate again and the rep mad note of me not having the dumb cushions, she also noted that i should use anti-static bubble wrap and whatnot and the RMA will NOT be refused for using that packaging.  It also only has to go just past Toronto for mailing so the cost of the bubble wrap wont be of concern as the distance and weight of the HD isn't very much ( or so i would assume )


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## Kreij (May 8, 2012)

Just put the drive in an anti-static bag and then in the bubble wrap. 


For a bit of clarification on the SMART relocation errors.

Bad sectors are a failure of the medium. This could be isolated to a particular spot due to the manufacturing process and never progress further, or it could be an overall degredation of the medium over time that will lead to catastrrophic failure.
When a read/write/verification error occurs, a remapping of the sector is attempted. If the sector is bad enough the data may not be salvageable on the remap. These will show up as unsuccessful remaps.

Relocation errors are not a sign of impending doom, but if you read through Googles statistics on hard drive failures you will see that when a drive throws relocation errors there is a *significant statistical probability* that the drive will fail *sooner* than one that is not exhibiting this behavior.

There is no data which correlates disk usage to bad sectors at all. So if someone tells you that because you are hammering your hard drives it will lead to bad sectors, they are full of shit.

What is significant statistical probability?
It means that when you review lots of occurances there is a consistant trend that most will fall at some point in a statistical curve of failure or survival.

What does sooner mean? 
Could still last for years and die of something else before the bad sector growth eats it alive.
As was stated, the rate of the bad sector growth is more indicative of impending doom than just the fact that sectors have been remapped.


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## hat (May 8, 2012)

Yeah, if I were handling RMAs I would see no reason not to accept that sort of packaging. I've gotten drives from newegg that were packaged much worse...


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## CaptainFailcon (May 9, 2012)

hat said:


> Yeah, if I were handling RMAs I would see no reason not to accept that sort of packaging. I've gotten drives from newegg that were packaged much worse...



I once got a hard drive that was just thrown in a single layer of bubble wrap and then placed at the bottem of the box :shadedshu


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## Kreij (May 9, 2012)

Some people just stuff them into padded envelopes and send them back. 
That's why manufacturers usually require a minimum packaging requirement.
They prefer the original packaging, but as long as it's sufficient to prevent shock damage they are usually okay with it.
Same with monitors and other items. It's impossible for a manufacturer to expect a company that uses dozens of hundreds of components to keep all the original boxes.


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## entropy13 (May 9, 2012)

There are some weird sounds...and it seems it's coming from that drive. Ugh.


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## CaptainFailcon (May 9, 2012)

entropy13 said:


> There are some weird sounds...and it seems it's coming from that drive. Ugh.



clicking is bad ....


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## librin.so.1 (May 12, 2012)

*Is my hard drive failing? [current pending sector count]*

Edit: This was supposed to be a new thread. Yet for some reason, it attached itself to this one. *shrug*


Spoiler



Note: There was a _similar_ thread Here, but I thought it would be for the best not to "hijack" it, so I decided to start a new one. If this judgment of mine is bad, mods, please move/merge it. Thank You!


 /edit

About a WD15EARS-00MVB0 (WD Caviar Green).
I checked SMART data of my HDDs again not long ago, and I noticed, that one of my drives has a warning on:


```
ID: 197
Current Pending Sector Count

Normalized: 196
Worst: 196
Threshold: 0
Value: 997 sectors

Raw: 0xE50300000000
```



Spoiler



"Number of sectors waiting to be remapped. If the sector waiting to be remapped is subsequently written or read successfully, this value is decreased and the sector is not remapped. Read errors on the sector will not remap the sector, it will only be remapped on a failed write attempt."



That is the current reading. At the moment I spotted this, it was 1022 (so it decreased). Though, Reallocated Sector Count && Reallocation Count (IDs 5 & 196) are both at 0, so it seems those few sectors had been "recovered".
I ran chkdsk /f /r on Window$ (as of it 97% is in an NTFS partition), it found nothing wrong with that drive. Also ran HDD Regenerator - it also found nothing.

Should I be worried? Is this enough of an "excuse" to RMA it?

Also:


W1zzard said:


> if you have a WD drive and that number keeps going up, or the drive shows hangs while accessing, RMA it.
> WD offers to send you a drive before you send yours, so easy to transfer data


I was wondering, if this "sending a drive before" is available in my region, or is it only for the US?


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## librin.so.1 (May 24, 2012)

B.ring
U.p
M.y
P.ost


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## fahadghouri (Aug 19, 2012)

*brand new seagate barracuda 2 tb 7200 rpm*

Hi,

I have just got my hard drive and after running crystal disk info, hd tune and HDDScan it says it has reallocated sector count value 100, worst 100, raw 181, threshold 036.

It is brand new drive and i checked it before putting data in it with above mentioned utilities.  After putting data its the same and its been a week now.

I have attached a screenshot please help me decide to send hard drive back to vendor or should i keep it ? hard drive is working fine though.

Thanks for your time.


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## OneMoar (Aug 19, 2012)

fahadghouri said:


> Hi,
> 
> I have just got my hard drive and after running crystal disk info, hd tune and HDDScan it says it has reallocated sector count value 100, worst 100, raw 181, threshold 036.
> 
> ...



Probly a SMART error ignore it ..


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## fahadghouri (Aug 19, 2012)

thanks for your response, i have checked it with all 3 major hdd utilities, it may be an error but i need to make sure as i am willing to fill it up. just an idea from experts. thanks.


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## t_ski (Aug 19, 2012)

Could be a defect found at the factory and fixed by reallocation


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## Aquinus (Aug 19, 2012)

A long smart test should tell if you if the drive is suitable to still be used or not.

If you start up a Ubuntu LiveCD you could run:



> sudo -i
> apt-get install smartmontools
> smartctl -t long /dev/sda #assuming the first drive is what you're talking about



It could take a while and it runs in the background. I recommend running it over night and checking it with this:



> smartctl -a /dev/sda



Once again, I'm assuming the drive is living at /dev/sda and not a higher order drive.


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## silkstone (Aug 19, 2012)

I just lost my HDD to this, basically they are bad sector waiting to be allocated to the "backup"sectors on the disk. Once they have run out, you will be looking at a dead HDD.

Keep your eye on this and the reallocated sector count, if it keeps increasing day in day out you wanna backup and RMA asap.


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## atikkur (Aug 19, 2012)

i once lost my hardisk because of this. it tends to increase the realocated number if you keep using it. and win7 notified me to back up my hdd every time i login, it's first warning of a hdd would be failing. even if you lucky and still fine, it still have a negative effect,, your hdd access will be slow at some point/sector that affected. just return/rma it while it's still new, just dont take a risk.


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## Blooker (Jul 3, 2014)

The information here was usefull already, but I have a slightly different case:

I had a few harddisks in a while, they shown 600 bad sectors or even more, gave 'condition' warnings (said they were low on health) in other words the utilities said it was near failure.

But the disks worked fine and never failed while oftenly used. How is that possible, can it be wrong S.M.A.R.T data, or can some kind of event through years mark a disk with it while it actually will last forever?

Sorry to bump this but it matches the extent of my question the best: How can it be near 'failure' while the result of the bad sectors (would be performance and other issues) is nowhere to be found

in other words, can something result in that info (disk attributes) being falsely reported as that to the utility


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## RCoon (Jul 3, 2014)

Blooker said:


> The information here was usefull already, but I have a slightly different case:
> 
> I had a few harddisks in a while, they shown 600 bad sectors or even more, gave 'condition' warnings (said they were low on health) in other words the utilities said it was near failure.
> 
> ...



If data is never hitting those sectors you won't notice it. Until the computer decides to dump data in the exact areas where those dodgy sectors are, the HDD will probably run fine. If however, you're doing some very important work, hit save, and the HDD decides it's time to save on those sectors, it'll probably crash and lose whatever it was trying to write in that area.

I Managed to backup an entire drive that had too many reallocated sectors, and it backed up the entire drive apart from about 3 movie files in a random folder. The computer would run fine until it had to seek around those files, and just crash.

Bottom line is, if Smart Data says imminent failure, backup and replace. Don't try to be smart about it (no pun intended).


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## Ruyki (Jul 3, 2014)

Blooker said:


> The information here was usefull already, but I have a slightly different case:
> 
> I had a few harddisks in a while, they shown 600 bad sectors or even more, gave 'condition' warnings (said they were low on health) in other words the utilities said it was near failure.
> 
> ...



I'm pretty sure that a drive never uses bad sectors again after they are found. So you should be fine if things stay as they are. However having bad sectors on a drive indicates that there might be a problem with it, a problem that can cause more bad sectors to appear at any time or the drive might just completely die.

You backup data right?


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## librin.so.1 (Jul 3, 2014)

FWIW, I had a torrent that would keep getting corrupt because one of its blocks kept getting written to a bad sector and thus kept failing its hash check when read. That very same HDD I mentioned in my post on the first page two years ago, BTW. Now at more or less stable 1290 bad sectors.


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