Is My Hard Disk Failing ?

[swash]

There are some warning signs for my Western Digital WD5000AAKX purchased 5 months ago.

Both The Diagnostic tests with WD Data Lifeguard Failed (Quick and Extended).

Here are the results

Test Option: QUICK TEST 
Model Number: WDC WD5000AAKX-001CA0 
Unit Serial Number: WD-WMAYU2281057 
Firmware Number: 15.01H15 
Capacity: 500.11 GB 
SMART Status: PASS 
Test Result: FAIL 
Test Error Code: 06-Quick Test on drive 3 did not complete! Status code = 07 (Failed read test element), Failure Checkpoint = 97 (Unknown Test) SMART self-test did not complete on drive 3! 
Test Time: 16:02:06, January 01, 2012 

Test Option: EXTENDED TEST 
Model Number: WDC WD5000AAKX-001CA0 
Unit Serial Number: WD-WMAYU2281057 
Firmware Number: 15.01H15 
Capacity: 500.11 GB 
SMART Status: PASS 
Test Result: FAIL 
Test Error Code: 08-Error was detected while repairing bad sectors. 
Test Time: 17:32:18, January 01, 2012

After that I tested it with HDtune.
The health tab in HDtune shows ok while a surface scan shows 6 bad blocks.

Screenshots







However When I check with Crystal Disk Info
It shows two SMART attributes in caution :

1) Current Pending Sector Count - 8 (raw value)

2) Uncorrectable Sector Count - 3 (raw value)


Now the question is - What does all this mean ?
Is this HDD going to fail in short term ?
Should I create an RMA ?
Please advice about the same.

 

[d1rtyju1c3]

I would RMA.

Although sector issues wont usually cause the drive to fail considering there is around 975,000,000 sectors in a 500GB hdd, once it starts they usually continue to multiply, but not always. It also may cause the files on the bad sector to become unrecoverable. There are programs out there that will fix bad sectors kinda, and they usually take days to run. Spinrite is probably the best free one out there. What it does for the most part is recover the files off of the bad sectors then it will mark the sectors as bad so that the hdd wont write to it.

Hope this helps

 

[rolli59]

Yep time to backup and RMA.

 

[swash]

Yeah but spinrite costs $89 any other freeware to do the job !

 

[dish_moose]

If there is physical damage no software is going to fix it - free or not.
-RMA now - save yourself a headache.
-Bruce

 

[d1rtyju1c3]

http://hddguru.com/software/2005.10.02-MHDD/

 

[d1rtyju1c3]

If there is physical damage no software is going to fix it - free or not.
-RMA now - save yourself a headache.
-Bruce

No, no software will fix it and I agree, I would RMA too. The only thing software will do is mark the sectors as bad and it wont write to them. That is not ensuring that more bad sectors wont appear, because more than likely more will. But I have had hdd's with bad sectors work for a long time after spinrite was used.

 

[rolli59]

Since in warranty do the RMA if it had been out of warranty consider using software to try to salvage it.

 

[danwat1234]

Yeah but spinrite costs $89 any other freeware to do the job !

No, Sprinrite 6.0 is free on bittorrent.

As for the 'error was detected while repairing bad sectors' error on WD's diagnostic software, I have learned that running software called HDD regenerator (also free on bittorrent) bootable CD on the drive effectively remaps those bad sectors or marks those bad sectors as bad.
The problem with my drive was that there were a few 'pending bad sectors' and a full read surface scan would not force the drive to remap these bad sectors, so I kept on getting new file corruption errors on chkdsk read-based surface scans every time.

When I ran WD's windows diagnostic program (lifeguard diagnostics), it said 'error was detected while repairing bad sector' and the pending sector count was still there.
So It turns out that WD's diagnostic program does not do a write based surface test.
HDD regenerator fixed it right away. It takes a while to scan a large drive but now the drive works perfectly now. Before I though I'd have to buy a new drive. Planned obsolescence? Their own diagnostic software ought to do everything an aftermarket diagnostic software can do...

Bottom line, use HDD regenerator to get rid of your pending bad sector count SMART attribute.