Hard Disk:S.M.A.R.T. Stas BAD, Back up and replace

Does the S.M.A.R.T. warning go away when your 2.5" drive is not connected? If so, then take your 2.5" drive back to where you bought it from for a warranty replacement. Just because you can't find bad sectors from another computer, it doesn't matter, the drive is reporting itself as having some sort of problem (include the exact error message for your vendor when returning the drive).

The reason your SATA-to-USB connector may not be reporting any S.M.A.R.T. errors is that many of those devices don't support S.M.A.R.T.

Also, as long as you're only connecting/disconnecting the SATA drive while everything's powered off, you should be able to safely assume that your drive wasn't damaged by any of your equipment.

Formatting the drive usually won't make a difference with regard to reducing bad sectors (although it can make the problem worse depending on the cause), but there is a software solution that does have an excellent success rate that may be helpful to you if your hard drive isn't under warranty:

SpinRite 6 by Steve Gibson
http://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.html

Randolf Richardson

Posted 2011-11-12T00:30:27.330

Reputation: 14 002

He said bad smart data. That's not the same as No smart data. Sure with USB you get no smart data. SMART data gives STATS, not really errors messages. – barlop – 2011-11-12T01:37:24.937

Spinrite is not well recommended by experts.. Scott Mueller in his book gives it some criticism. I did have a long discussion with somebody about it in comments , prior to the chat link appearing, and all the comments were deleted, it's not easy to find all the info though I did in the past. Also in the reviews he uses, people reviewing it repeat some false claims he makes. – barlop – 2011-11-12T01:38:57.913

"Formatting the drive usually won't make a difference with regard to reducing bad sectors (although it can make the problem worse depending on the cause), but there is a software solution " No software does, maybe you read his claim to make hard drive crashes a thing of the past. No software does that. Besides the false claims.. Mueller gave it some technical criticism. If a hard drive is bad, get rid of it. And i'd add, hard drive recovery people wouldn't touch spinrite 'cos it writes to the drive. – barlop – 2011-11-12T01:43:45.583

Well, my experience with SpinRite has been that it can help to recover data from bad sectors (and I remember using it back in the terrible times of RLL and MFM in the 1980s to do just that). Perhaps this is just "luck of the draw," I can't say for sure because each failure is unique, but the reasoning that Steve Gibson gives about the techniques that SpinRite employs seems sensible to me. – Randolf Richardson – 2011-11-12T01:46:17.983

As for hanging on to bad drives, I'm not advocating that -- if a drive has a problem, just replace it. If there's data that needs to be recovered, then SpinRite obviously isn't the only option, but in my view it can be a valid solution. – Randolf Richardson – 2011-11-12T01:47:43.097

Your question is incredibly unclear. "hen I plugged in my 1.5 tb 3.5" drive it recognizes it " WHAT recognised it? What were you plugging it into. What is a "media computer". "The case is small and can accommodate for 2 2.5" drives, no 3.5" drives" What case? The case for your big computer, or your laptop.. Are you trying the hard drive in a laptop internally, a desktop internally, and in USB externally. Hard drives in USB ports are less fussy. – barlop – 2011-11-12T00:42:15.743

Hard Disk:S.M.A.R.T. Stas BAD, Back up and replace

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