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Does this HDDScan indicate that I have a faulty drive?

TJCS

TJCS

Senior member
I am new to HDDScan and I would like to know if my results is an indication of a failing/faulty drive.

My 7-month old Fantom external hard drive randomly started making some strange sounds this week and I used HDDScan to check the drive and found 42 bad blocks. The tests now seems to be stuck at 98% for almost 2hrs, and here is a screen shot of the results:

Fantom_HDDScan.png



What would be the next best thing to do?

1. RMA the drive (I think there is a 1-year warranty from Fantom)
2. Try ScanDisk or other recovery tools to hide the bad blocks? Any Recommendations for such tools?
3. Other thoughts?
 
personally, if i find 1 bad block i suggest to replace the drive, if there is more than 5 I definitely replace the drive.
 
I ran the test again today using verified and showed 44 bad blocks; I will go ahead and RMA the drive under the warranty.

A side question about HDDScan: What is the difference between the verify and read/write tests?
 
Last edited:
To my surprise, Fantom's RMA service is pretty quick and painless (replacement arrived in about 7 working days). Only downside is they sent me a slower replacement drive (Hitachi 7K100.B > WD10EAVS) 🙁.

Here is a shot of my HDDScan:

WD10EAVS_HDDScan_ReadTest_Censored.png



Does anyone know the acceptable range in the number of green and orange blocks in HDDScan? I tried to google it, but didn't find anything.
 
Orange isn't ideal, but when in Windows, funny things can happen.

I wouldn't be worried about it.

MHDD is basically the bootable version; i consider it more reliable as there's nothing to interfere with testing.

But i don't think it'll run w/ an external, & it doesn't like a lot of newer SATA controllers sadly.
 
That will be a challenge for me because there is a warranty void sticker right where I need to disassemble my drive. Is there something I can do to make sure I don't write data over that orange block? MS ScanDisk?
 
TJCS said:
That will be a challenge for me because there is a warranty void sticker right where I need to disassemble my drive. Is there something I can do to make sure I don't write data over that orange block? MS ScanDisk?
Click to expand...

No need to worry about it.

It's not a bad block, it just took a bit more time to access it is all.

If Speedfan/CrystalDiskInfo show your SMART values, you can keep an eye on in thru them.
The "View Detailed Info" option on Speedfan takes you to a webpage w/ more info.
CrystalDiskInfo will tell you if it find anything off, though granted, it's not always right, particularly for Seagate drives.
 
Thanks n7, I will take a note of the methods you mentioned above. I Haven't heard of CrystalDiskInfo before, I will check it out. Thanks again.
 
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