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Failing portable HDD... what am I looking at?

Charlie98

Charlie98

Diamond Member
I have a 500GB Seagate USB3 portable HDD I've used for years. 3 years ago, once I figured out what CrystalDisk and SMART was, I realized it had 8 reallocated sectors. OK, so I bought another one, assuming The End was near, but continued to use it for backup duties. Forward to the present, it's still doing fine... even with the reallocated sectors.

Last week I ran CrystalDisk and now it's up to 14 reallocated sectors... so I installed Seagate's SeaTools and ran the diagnostic checks on it... which the drive passed? 😕

So, I'm confused... SMART says it has problems, the diagnostic checks say it's fine. I don't trust it as far as I can throw it, so it's relegated to secondary backup duty, but I what is the deal with the 'PASS' on the drive diagnostics?


 
If a drive is handling bad sectors itself, I personally would continue using it but I would keep an eye on it.

My main PC's old boot HDD showed reallocated sectors that I wasn't aware of until I checked its SMART readings. I carried on using it until it failed to resume from hibernation a few times, even though a disk check corrected the issue (ie. forced reallocation of sectors). At that point I decided it was making its problems into my problem, so I replaced it.

If a customer's disk is showing signs of iffyness (reallocated sectors for example), I normally ask them that if the PC were to not start unexpectedly, would they consider the problem to be an emergency (ie. they need it within the next day or two), or could they survive without the computer for say a week while the disk is being replaced. If they consider such a scenario to be an emergency, I recommend replacing the disk. Otherwise I recommend that they let me know if the computer acts weirdly (delays, instability) in future.
 
Once it starts to have reallocated sectors, IMO, it is time to get something new, and use that drive as a scratch drive, since, it will only get worse.
Needless to say, backup whatever you have on it ASAP if you value the data on it.

As for why the OEM tools say all is fine, it depends on the threshold they set for it.
 
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