Current Pending Sector, How bad is this?

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deathlyhall0ws

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Oct 23, 2010
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Hello everyone!

Two months ago one of my drives (WD1002FAEX) started showing 6 Current Pending Sectors in HDTune (At least I'm guessing the number under "Data" is the value, here's a screenshot). And since then every couple of days that number changes between 4-6, while the reallocated count remains zero.

Now, some files were corrupted but I've backed up everything important and getting a new drive next week. But my question is, is this drive completely screwed? Can I still use it for anything or are these numbers too bad?
 
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In theory to try and force the drive to reallocate the sector, you should just need to write over the bad sector. It lets the drive know that the data is no longer needed and so it can reallocate the sector. To do so, it's probably safest and easiest for you to just wipe the whole drive with a write zero function. I think WD has their own tool but something like DBAN should also work.

It's worth a shot but I'm not sure if it's guaranteed to reallocate the bad sectors. I've heard of cases where the write is successful without reallocating and so the drive just removed the sector from the pending count until it fails a read again. That's kind of what I'm assuming is the case...
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rkzhao

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Mar 8, 2016
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With the pending sectors fluctuating and with reallocated sector count remaining zero, likely the sectors are marginal and consistently fail but the drive keep trying to reuse the bad sectors instead of reallocating them. It's hard to say if the drive will ever properly reallocate those sectors

It's up to you whether you want to keep using it but I wouldn't put anything on there that I don't want to risk getting corrupted. Likely the drive will continue to use those bad sectors and you'll end up with more corrupted files. If the drive ever actually reallocates those sectors and Pending Sectors goes back down to zero without further fluctuations, then it'd be a bit better.
 
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deathlyhall0ws

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Oct 23, 2010
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Is there a way to force the drive to reallocate them?
 
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rkzhao

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Mar 8, 2016
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1,860


In theory to try and force the drive to reallocate the sector, you should just need to write over the bad sector. It lets the drive know that the data is no longer needed and so it can reallocate the sector. To do so, it's probably safest and easiest for you to just wipe the whole drive with a write zero function. I think WD has their own tool but something like DBAN should also work.

It's worth a shot but I'm not sure if it's guaranteed to reallocate the bad sectors. I've heard of cases where the write is successful without reallocating and so the drive just removed the sector from the pending count until it fails a read again. That's kind of what I'm assuming is the case with your fluctuating pending sector count but it probably doesn't hurt to try and wipe the drive since you have a new one coming in.
 
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deathlyhall0ws

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Oct 23, 2010
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Alright, I will give that a try. Thanks! :)
 
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