HGST HDN724040ALE640 Not Detected As Damaged?

[Nissan_SR20_Man]

All,

 

I have an HGST HDN724040ALE640 that has reallocated sectors but does not show as damaged in the status column while scanner is open, it says smart warning? Once i click the ignore smart warning it shows it as healthy?

 

SMART status shows...

1975 reallocated sectors - highlighted red

4522 reallocation events - highlighted yellow

296 pending sector - highlighted yellow

 

BUT not damaged? I have 15 disk monitored and I know others have been detected with damaged sectors and scanner did it's job. I was totally caught off guard by this behavior and the drive is very new. Good thing I'm a geek that checks the smart values once a week...

 

Scanner version 2.5.1.3062

[Christopher (Drashna)]

Reallocated sectors are not damaged. They are sectors that the disk detected as problematic and have been "fixed" already. 

 

The damaged is sectors that are having problems being read.  Since they've been "fixed", that won't happen.

 

 

However, I would HIGHLY recommend replacing this drive. This many reallocated sectors may make a signficant negative impact on performance, as well as indicate a problem with the disk. 

[Nissan_SR20_Man]

HGST has been a solid performer for me. The drive is under warranty so it's going back. FYI hgst does not offer advanced replacements like WD. You have to mail it, once received they release one. No way to use a credit card to get it faster...pretty crappy.

 

The scanner behavior seems wrong, despite your description. If your notes in the scanner smart data claims failure could be in less than 24 hours, it seems counter intuitive to not flag it as damaged. It's your software not mine, but in my mind one damaged sector is too many... and countless research backs that up. After one it could last minutes or years, totally a crap shoot.

 

Despite my issue and criticism, your products rock, are better then anyone's, and your suite of products keep my data safe, drives pooled and the wife happy when she wants to stream media...all while I don't stress out. Rock on and keep up the great work!

[Christopher (Drashna)]

HGST has been a solid performer for me. The drive is under warranty so it's going back. FYI hgst does not offer advanced replacements like WD. You have to mail it, once received they release one. No way to use a credit card to get it faster...pretty crappy.

 

 I've heard nothing but good things about HGST. But it's disappointing to hear that they don't have an advanced replacement option. So, yeah, pretty crappy.

 

 

The scanner behavior seems wrong, despite your description. If your notes in the scanner smart data claims failure could be in less than 24 hours, it seems counter intuitive to not flag it as damaged. It's your software not mine, but in my mind one damaged sector is too many... and countless research backs that up. After one it could last minutes or years, totally a crap shoot.

 

The confusion is definitely understandable.  Disks are a complicated beast. 

 

 

The surface scan does a sector by sector check of the entire disk, by reading from every LBA address, basically.  It checks to make sure all of the sectors are readable, and reports the ones that are not.  That's all it does (well, plus the file recovery). This doesn't fix the issues, but just identifies them. 

 

 

The disk's firmware will recover or remap/reallocate these sectors when they're written to, next.  And in this case, the physical sector is marked as bad in the firmware, and a spare sector elsewhere on the disk is used.  This causes a performance hit, as these reallocated sectors are no longer sequential, and there is a lot more moving around by the read/write heads.  

 

 

Normal usage of the disk will (eventually) cause the disk to write to these sectors. Either "fixing" the issue or by remapping it (as above).  You can force the disk to fix these by running a full write pass of the disk (eg a non-quick format), or you can use CHKDSK to check (ideally, with the "/b" switch).  

 

 I hope that clears up the difference and why we handle it as we do. 

 

TL;DR: "damaged" is before the disk handles it, and reallocated is after the disk handles it.

And yes, either is bad. 

 

 

 

Despite my issue and criticism, your products rock, are better then anyone's, and your suite of products keep my data safe, drives pooled and the wife happy when she wants to stream media...all while I don't stress out. Rock on and keep up the great work!

 

Thanks for the kind words!