Current Pending Sector Count - Should I Worry?

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JBURNS489

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Jul 29, 2015
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Today I launched crystaldiskinfo, and it gave me a caution sign for one of my internal hard drives, Western Digital 1TB 7200RPM. The current pending sector count is highlighted as yellow, and after doing a little research it seems like it could be a serious issue. I downloaded the Western Digital LifeGuard Diagnostics tool, and let it run through an extensive scan. It came back with bad sectors, but did not say how many. I told it to try and auto repair the bad sectors, and it failed. Should I start looking into the warranty information, as the hard drive is less than 6 months old? Should I worry at all, since it seems to be only 1 sector, and not growing as far as I can tell. If it is getting worse, it's doing so very slowly as this is the first time I have ever seen this error. Any thoughts?

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Your hard drive is in the very early stages of beginning to fail. Either that or it's defective. Please back up all data on the drive and use any warranty you have on it. If it's Western Digital, they usually do a good job of standing behind their promises. Start the process of replacement here http://support.wdc.com/cat_Products.aspx?ID=6&lang=en by clicking on the Warranty and Returns tab on the top and hitting product replacement from the drop down menu. Follow directions from there, should be pretty simple.

I hope you get your data off in tact and have no problems with the RMA process.
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weberdarren97

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Aug 10, 2015
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Your hard drive is in the very early stages of beginning to fail. Either that or it's defective. Please back up all data on the drive and use any warranty you have on it. If it's Western Digital, they usually do a good job of standing behind their promises. Start the process of replacement here http://support.wdc.com/cat_Products.aspx?ID=6&lang=en by clicking on the Warranty and Returns tab on the top and hitting product replacement from the drop down menu. Follow directions from there, should be pretty simple.

I hope you get your data off in tact and have no problems with the RMA process.
 
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JBURNS489

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I feared that's what the answer was. I had such good luck with this PC so far, I knew something had to give lol. This is my first build and it booted on first try, and have I never had to reopen the case since then. Here is another screenshot showing that I failed the extensive scan, but passed the quick one. Either way, it is not 100% and I will be pursuing a RMA. Thanks guys

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JBURNS489

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So according to Western Digital, my hard drive was sold as part of a pre-built PC, and hence not covered under any warranty. I bought this hard drive from PC outlet, and built the computer myself from the ground up. I have the receipt from PC outlet, and the drive information, but WD is not budging. I guess my next hard drive wont be from Western Digital :(. Any recommendations?
 
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USAFRet

USAFRet

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What does PCOutlet say? You bought it from them.
 
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USAFRet

USAFRet

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This might be a good indication to never buy from PC Outlet again. Selling repackaged drives.

(assuming you gave them the correct serial number)
 
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JBURNS489

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Yeah maybe I shouldn't judge WD for this mess but PC Outlet. I gave them the serial number that pops up on crystal disk info and the WD Lifeguard software. (they both match) The only thing I can think of is either WD computers have an error, or PC Outlet re packaged a hard drive and sold it to me. Either way, it looks like I am out of a hard drive. Thank god it isn't my primary drive, but still a pain nonetheless. Thanks for all of your help USAFret
 
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JBURNS489

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UPDATE: Several months have gone by since I started this post, and I just wanted to update everyone here. The hard drive ended up NOT failing, and after some time the error just went away? It's hard to tell if the pending sectors are still there or not, but crystal disk info is no longer giving me a caution on that drive. Anyone ever heard or seen this type of behavior before? Do you think the drive is safe to trust now?
 
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weberdarren97

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1) Thanks for taking the time out of your day to do so. And thank you for coming back to your original post instead of creating a new one and confusing a lot of users. :D

2) It just stopped giving you errors? I wouldn't take that as the drive is now reliable. More likely, the firmware has figured out how to cope with whatever was going wrong. I wouldn't trust this drive as the only storage medium for important information. I'd still keep an active backup of everything on this drive that matters to you, just in case.

3) Crystal Disk Info should not be trusted for all drives. Yes, it's "universal" but for WD drives you want WD software. Their WD Data Lifeguard is specifically designed for their drives. If its tests no longer find any issues, I'd say the drive is at least attempting to function properly. I doubt your platters suddenly fixed themselves, more than likely a software (or firmware) "fix" was automatically applied and has put the issue on the back burner, never to show its ugly head again until all of a sudden the drive completely fails. (just guessing on that last one)

4) Have not seen this before. TBH, storage is not my strong suit. Do I think it's safe to trust now? Not really. There has to still be an issue, it's probably using software to work around it, but that doesn't mean that the drive has physically been repaired.
 
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JBURNS489

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As far as I can tell, the drive seems to be in healthy shape. I ran the extended test with WD Lifeguard Diagnostics and it passed, where I failed almost a year ago. I forgot how long the extended test takes lol (almost 2 hrs), but it gave no errors and everything seems good to go. Here are the screenshots of crystal disk info and the extended test result from WD. I backed everything important up to an external hard drive a long time ago, and have since used the drive in question for steam games mostly. As far as safe to trust, I meant realistically trustworthy. I mean yeah, every hard drive will eventually fail, every person will die, and nothing will last forever. I get that...Just wondering about the expected longevity of this particular hard drive, considering the issues I had prior and the seemingly lack of them now. Would you yourself trust a hard drive like this one with something like your favorite photographs, providing there is a backup made periodically? I guess the real question is how much would you trust the firmware "fix"? lol. Thanks for your guy's help and feedback, it's very much appreciated!
EDIT: I don't have windows installed on this hard drive either. Windows is installed on an SSD, and this drive was meant for storage basically. I have played steam games from it for some time, and haven't had any weird behavior, crashes, or anything to cause me concern.
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