Should I care about my HDD?

This is screenshot of HD Tune:

alt text

Should I care about my HDD? Are these warnings important?

Vimvq1987

Posted 2010-05-13T14:38:20.093

Reputation: 161

Looks like there are a lot of reallocated event and one Ultra DMA CRC Error, that's why these warnings show up as important. It's up to you whether you care about your HDD, you can click on an item for a detailed description. – Tamara Wijsman – 2012-04-19T06:36:47.750

Answers

General rule: if your drive is throwing errors, replace it. Harddrives are cheap, and crashes are expensive.

That being said, you might want to try and re-post the picture, so we can give you some more specific advice.

Edit: Absolutely replace the drive. CRC (Cyclic redundancy check) errors mean that when the drive went back and compared what it thought it wrote to what was on the drive, it was wrong. This means it missed the write error when it happened, and only caught it afterward. There is only one of those, so by itself, I wouldn't worry. But the "Reallocated Event Errors" are situations where the drive is writing around bad sectors, and it's done that a lot...I'd worry about it.

On my gear, if it says "warning" I replace it, or at least make sure I'm backed up.

Satanicpuppy

Posted 2010-05-13T14:38:20.093

Reputation: 6 169

3Agreed. Drives should never have errors, and this might be the only warning you get before catastrophic drive failure. – Mark Porter – 2010-05-13T15:01:48.070

Agreed. Totally cheap stuff, easy to replace for a same size/perf model or even a better one. – Apache – 2010-05-13T15:13:17.137

1Ultra DMA CRC error count is not a critical value. Reallocated Event Count would be worrisome, but actually the value is ok (100 as opposed to the threshold of 0) and there is no apparent reason why there would be need for a warning. Hence there is no need to replace the hard drive just yet. – akid – 2010-05-13T18:19:29.447

CRC error - your disk cable is not well connected Relocation - there is actual damage to disc mechanics, hopefully not a misadjusted head, and only a scratch on the platter, you really need a new disk, and probably already get good data in a safer place.

ZaB

Posted 2010-05-13T14:38:20.093

Reputation: 2 365

i was reading smart description long ago. relocating sectors is drive's microcodes way to keep data safe while drive is damaged. usually it grows for worse. – ZaB – 2012-04-19T07:48:04.510

Well, the good news is, these are all pre-failure conditions - while you can find a more detailed comprehensive description on wikipedia, reallocation event counts are when sectors are damaged and their contents are moved to spare sectors. This isn't catastrophic, unlike a high pending reallocation sector count, but is a sign that your hard drive is starting to have bad sectors.

CRC Error count appears to refer to the count of errors in data transfer via the interface cable - this may mean issues with either the cable or the interface, but not the data itself.

In short, at some point of time in future, your hard drive may run out of spare sectors to remap, and you nay already be having cable or interface issues. The former could mean data loss, the later, performance loss.

I wouldn't worry much about your hard drive, but this is a good time to look at backing up anything thats important, before you need to learn the value of backups the hard way! Hard drives can be swapped. Data on the other hand...

Journeyman Geek

Posted 2010-05-13T14:38:20.093

Reputation: 119 122