Current Pending Sector (SMART attribute 197)

[duragezic]

I was attempting to see if my other harddrive has issues or if its disappearance from XP one day was a fluke. I figured I would check its SMART status so I loaded SpeedFan and by accident, clicked the in-depth analysis of drive before selecting the drive I wanted to do, so it loaded the page for my main drive.

And I noticed something that may be of concern on main hard drive, which wasn't even the one I meant to do! The status of nearly all of the SMART attributes is listed as Very Good, except for attribute 197 "Current Pending Sector"

Current Pending Sector 100 1 Watch
Warning: Current Pending Sector is below the average limits (253-253)

On the Wiki article for SMART, there are descriptions of each attribute and the current pending sector is highlighted with "critical". That's no good? I have no problems with the drive in question (Samsung HD501LJ 500gb, bought in June 2007) and wouldn't have even noticed that if not by accident.

I ran a scan disk on each partition but that didn't change anything. The analysis page mentions using a tool to fix it. I know there are various tools out there to "fix" your hard drive, but I'm not sure which ones are even legit or actually can fix anything. Plus I'm sort of weary with using tools like that as a preventative measure.

So my questions are is this SMART attribute actually "critical" in that imminent failure is probable, and if so, are there tools out there that could prevent that/fix whatever problem there is?

Bah, I really hope I don't have to RMA both of my drives. And this Samsung is the worse since it has all of my data on it once my 250gb started to worry me.

 

[robisbell]

go to Samsung's website and the tools to properly check your HDD will be there, and maybe a tool to correct whatever the true issue is.

 

[duragezic]

Thanks for the suggestion. I only found one tool on there, ES-Tool, which I burned the .iso to a CD and booted it. It is pretty limited on options, and all that I could do was run the diagnostic, which did several tests, all of which passed. Isn't one of the other manufacturer's tools the one that will work with any hard drive? Maybe it would have some more in-depth diagnostics or a way to fix that error.

I'd like to know if my data is about to go bye bye, and also even with the pain that it would be to RMA the drive, I don't want to submit an RMA unless I know the drive is faulty. I'll have to see if Samsung has a good RMA policy, hopefully free advance RMA. I know WD did when I had to do it a couple of years ago, and it only took 4-5 days to get the advance drive, then I shipped mine back in the same box. My roommate's RMA experience with Seagate OTOH, it was $20 extra for advance which he didn't want to do, then it took over 2 months to get the damn refurb or whatever back.

 

[boomerang]

See if there's something here that will fill the bill.

This website has links for a whole bunch (if not all) the HD manufacturers. I didn't read your full post so I apologize ahead of time if this has been covered.

 

[duragezic]

^^ Well the HUTIL listed on there is something I haven't tried but the info link leads to Disk Manager and Samsung's site has no hits on searching for hutil. I think maybe HUTIL is included in ES-Tool, or that the diagnostic functions in ES-Tool are the same as HUTIL, and that page isn't updated. But I'll give it a try.

Well I just got home and turned on my computer, about a minute into windows I heard a click of a hard drive powering off, and noticed the HDD activity LED constantly lit. That happens when my other drive, the Seagate 250gb is hosed, and sure enough it again disappeared. So that thing is definitely gonna get a RMA, even though SeaTools tests were all okay when it was appearing.

Just hope this SMART attribute thing isn't a real issue cause losing this drive while my 250gb is waiting for replacement or dead would be very very bad.