Question about S.M.A.R.T. test results.

[Marikir]

Okay, I assume that those of you who understand the topic might be able to shed light on my question.

I was asked to run a S.M.A.R.T. check on my system and used CrystalDiskInfo.  Someone looked at the results and cautioned me that I should be concerned and start planning to get a new hard-drive. 

The concerning results were:

05 Reallocated Sectors Count           2
C5 Current Pending Sector Count     2
C6 Uncorrectable Sector Count         2


But, as I understand it, sectors are...about 512 bytes in size?  So...out of a 320GB drive, are 2 bad and 2 pending that troublesome?  Or do I need to begin preparing to buy a new laptop or drive within the next month or two?


Oh, and the rest of this story?  The stuff of terror and frustration for over 36 hours.  But, I think this is the only thing left by all the...not-fun.  So, I'm curious if I should be concerned.  Or was the advice basically overzealous?

[Assallya]

I'm not sure how savvy you are so feel free to skip or ignore stuff!  I won't mind.  I just like to play it safe and assume people I'm trying to help have little experience  :)

If you defrag your drive regularly you are quite likely to burn out certain sectors of your disk more rapidly then the others.  This is normal.  Each portion of the disc can only support so many read and write routines.  When you defrag you rearrange your file system for speed and storage.  Thus, you force additional write cycles in particular areas.

In this case, you should- key word being "SHOULD"- be fine.  The S.M.A.R.T. would tell you if you were platters were spinning too slowly or were otherwise showing signs of failure.

I hope this helps!

HOWEVER, I always recommend you have backups.  I've learned the hard way having lost everything twice.  I've burned three drives in the last two years.  All of them have crashed and burned without warning.  (Two with smoke!)  The first reason is because I rescue old drives from my old computers and put them in the new one.  The second is that I push my drives hard.  I always have some sort of video or music playing and that spins the platters.

(Completely unrelated, one of those drives was burned out by my power supply.  It was a cheap thing from M.D.G. which provides minimal quality components.  It shorted and introduced a current into the metal case.  This, of course, fried my motherboard, central processor, memory modules, one hard disk and a video card.  That hurt.)

[Vekseid]

Okay, I assume that those of you who understand the topic might be able to shed light on my question.

I was asked to run a S.M.A.R.T. check on my system and used CrystalDiskInfo.  Someone looked at the results and cautioned me that I should be concerned and start planning to get a new hard-drive. 

The concerning results were:

05 Reallocated Sectors Count           2
C5 Current Pending Sector Count     2
C6 Uncorrectable Sector Count         2


But, as I understand it, sectors are...about 512 bytes in size?  So...out of a 320GB drive, are 2 bad and 2 pending that troublesome?  Or do I need to begin preparing to buy a new laptop or drive within the next month or two?


Oh, and the rest of this story?  The stuff of terror and frustration for over 36 hours.  But, I think this is the only thing left by all the...not-fun.  So, I'm curious if I should be concerned.  Or was the advice basically overzealous?

S.M.A.R.T. isn't that reliable anymore, and of those providers that do support it it's not certain how serious a given value is. I have a point, now, to always have at least two hard drives and back up my critical data to both. Just saner that way.