Four days ago I got a Windows 7 Popup about how S.M.A.R.T reports that hard disk failure might be imminent for my laptop’s 4-year-old HGST 1TB drive. Neither Speedfan’s SMART report nor Western Digital’s Diagnostic (which doesn’t even give raw values) flagged any issues, but HDDScan had a caution symbol (yellow triangle with exclamation point) next to Reallocation Event Count, even though both the Current and Worst SMART values still read 100. (BTW, there is no threshold value given for Reallocation Event Count.)
But I looked at the raw value, which was in Hex format, and using a Hex-to-Decimal converter saw that it was 29. Based on some things I read about even 30 perhaps being an iffy raw value for this measure, I placed an online order for a replacement drive. Over the next few days while awaiting the new drive, I kept tabs on this raw value, and it kept rising fairly steadily, to 54. This seemed to confirm that there could be trouble brewing with the drive (although the only *possible* symptom I could detect was occasional brief hesitation before responding to typing or scrolling). (BTW, even at that point Speedfan SMART and WD Diagnostics SMART still had the drive passing with flying colors. Oddly, there is no diagnostic from HGST that recognizes their own drive!)
But then things got weird: Last night, the night before the new drive was to arrive, I got two more Windows SMART disk warnings in quick succession. And an HDDScan SMART listing run immediately afterward showed the top line, Raw Read Error Rate, now had Current and Worst SMART values of 60 (down from 100), on a threshold of 62. So there was a “Critical” symbol next to it (X in a red circle). (Reallocation Event Count was still raw 54.)
I immediately did another backup (imaged the drive), but when I was done, both the Current *and Worst* SMART values for Raw Read Error Rate had jumped *up* to 75 on HDDScan, and there was no longer even a Caution symbol for the value, let alone Critical. I kept using the computer, and an hour later, both the Current *and Worst* values had jumped back up to 100! An hour later, they had both fallen to 85.
I have the new drive in now, but any thoughts on why the heck I could have been getting those weird jumping-around SMART readings for Raw Read Error Rate -- which Windows was apparently taking seriously? In particular how can WORST values go UP??? In this case WAY up. I’ve been Googling, and find no reports of that kind of behavior.
Thanks.
But I looked at the raw value, which was in Hex format, and using a Hex-to-Decimal converter saw that it was 29. Based on some things I read about even 30 perhaps being an iffy raw value for this measure, I placed an online order for a replacement drive. Over the next few days while awaiting the new drive, I kept tabs on this raw value, and it kept rising fairly steadily, to 54. This seemed to confirm that there could be trouble brewing with the drive (although the only *possible* symptom I could detect was occasional brief hesitation before responding to typing or scrolling). (BTW, even at that point Speedfan SMART and WD Diagnostics SMART still had the drive passing with flying colors. Oddly, there is no diagnostic from HGST that recognizes their own drive!)
But then things got weird: Last night, the night before the new drive was to arrive, I got two more Windows SMART disk warnings in quick succession. And an HDDScan SMART listing run immediately afterward showed the top line, Raw Read Error Rate, now had Current and Worst SMART values of 60 (down from 100), on a threshold of 62. So there was a “Critical” symbol next to it (X in a red circle). (Reallocation Event Count was still raw 54.)
I immediately did another backup (imaged the drive), but when I was done, both the Current *and Worst* SMART values for Raw Read Error Rate had jumped *up* to 75 on HDDScan, and there was no longer even a Caution symbol for the value, let alone Critical. I kept using the computer, and an hour later, both the Current *and Worst* values had jumped back up to 100! An hour later, they had both fallen to 85.
I have the new drive in now, but any thoughts on why the heck I could have been getting those weird jumping-around SMART readings for Raw Read Error Rate -- which Windows was apparently taking seriously? In particular how can WORST values go UP??? In this case WAY up. I’ve been Googling, and find no reports of that kind of behavior.
Thanks.
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