HDD fails SMART test but Lenovo Software says everything "OK"

[coolVariable]

Arrrghhh.
Every software that can read SMART information from HDDs says that my HDD is failing the SMART test due to a high start/stop count.
Since I already had issues with the same type of HDD before (this is my replacement HDD), I am extremely careful about data loss.

Call Lenovo and they asked me to run their stupid system diagnostic software. Ok - fine with me at first.
But as it turns out, their shit fucking crap diagnostic software (PC Doctor or whatever it is based on) does NOT read SMART info from the HDD. FUCKING GREAT!
The software does some read/write tests (same as the Bios) and everything is supposedly "fine". Well, every other software begs to differ!!!!

Except for calling Lenovo (and screaming at yelling at their moronic customer service) - is there anything I can do?

 

[Red Squirrel]

You could maybe try to stress the drive and hope it makes it fail more so the lenovo software picks it up. Backup obviously but I'm assuming that's already part of your routine.

Best way to stress it might be to install vista on it and just let it sit idle. You could also write random data to it over and over (check out the shred tool in linux).

 

[amdhunter]

Lenovo is usually cool with stuff like that. Tell them you ran a CHKDSK and it found bad sectors. That's all it took me to say to get a replacement drive from them a few times already.

They usually won't even question you after that.

 

[C1]

If the drive is SeaGate then it might not get a clean SMART report. I would just run the free SeaTools & see what happens. SeaTools is even able to fix certain problems by reassigning one or more bad allocation units.

I just cleared up a 300GB MAxtor by off loading the drive, wiping it with "WIPE" & reformatting it. Passes SeaTools test (except for a tripped temperature trigger [one time event] which may be why the drive got in trouble in the first place) & now works fine.

 

[RebateMonger]

Read the serial number of the disk and see if Seagate's Support site considers it under warranty.

 

[tcsenter]

start/stop cycle count is not a pass or fail value, IIRC.

 

[coolVariable]

start/stop cycle count is not a pass or fail value, IIRC.

It triggers a warning on every SMART software that the drive is "BAD"

 

[VirtualLarry]

If that's the only thing "wrong" with the drive, I wouldn't really worry about it.

 

[Lead Butthead]

SMART is overrated, frankly. In our test lab we've seen drive's SMART (and this is true for pretty much all major vendors' products) regularly painting its world as being a worry free and happy place despite being on its last leg. The thing to look for is unexplained lock ups and disk errors/timeouts reported in system event log. I have had Hitachi TravelStar SMART failing to report its own impending doom when Windows was reporting timeouts and errors in system event log.

 

[Elixer]

SMART is overrated, frankly. In our test lab we've seen drive's SMART (and this is true for pretty much all major vendors' products) regularly painting its world as being a worry free and happy place despite being on its last leg. The thing to look for is unexplained lock ups and disk errors/timeouts reported in system event log. I have had Hitachi TravelStar SMART failing to report its own impending doom when Windows was reporting timeouts and errors in system event log.

Not only overrated, but also highly questionable if it can detect HD failures more than 10% of the time, if that.

 

[coolVariable]

Still - the disk is under warranty and I had the EXACT SAME model fail on me before.

Seagate says this:
Component
The product you identified was sold as a system component. Please contact your place of purchase for service. Seagate sells many drives to direct OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) customers. These products are usually configured for the OEMs only, as components for their systems. You must contact your place of purchase for any warranty support on these drives.
If you purchased this unit directly from Seagate, please return to the previous page and verify your Seagate customer number, because the customer number you entered () does not match our records.

 

[RebateMonger]

So that leaves you with three options:

1) Call Lenovo again
2) Buy a replacement hard drive
3) Back up the hard drive (hopefully you already have), remove it from the PC, sandwich it between two pieces of wood and carefully tap it with a hammer. Sometimes this will fix the problem. Be careful, though, because if you hit it too hard it could possibly cause the drive to stop functioning.

Before you go too crazy, I did note that Intel said that a recent (2008) bug in their Matrix Storage Manager could cause artificially high start/stop counts with Vista and some hard drives.
http://downloadmirror.intel.com/17268/eng/releasenotes.htm

 

[coolVariable]

So that leaves you with three options:

1) Call Lenovo again
2) Buy a replacement hard drive
3) Back up the hard drive (hopefully you already have), remove it from the PC, sandwich it between two pieces of wood and carefully tap it with a hammer. Sometimes this will fix the problem. Be careful, though, because if you hit it too hard it could possibly cause the drive to stop functioning.

Before you go too crazy, I did note that Intel said that a recent (2008) bug in their Matrix Storage Manager could cause artificially high start/stop counts with Vista and some hard drives.
http://downloadmirror.intel.com/17268/eng/releasenotes.htm

#2 is out since I am not willing to spend a cent.

Interesting about the intel matrix issue. I did use this drive for 1 1/2 years in my laptop with intel matrix before now putting it into my Media Center PC as an OS drive.

 

[Voo]

Not only overrated, but also highly questionable if it can detect HD failures more than 10% of the time, if that.

The google study showed that there are four SMART values that strongly suggest that something is wrong with the disk. 44% of the drives showed signs in at least one of those category. So why SMART isn't a magic bullet for disk failure, I'd say a 50% chance to diagnose a disk failure in advance isn't that bad, is it?

If you include all SMART errors 64% of all drives showed failures - but that's rather useless.. seek error rates for example are so widespread and so harmless that I wouldn't do anything about it.

PS: The four categories were scan errors, reallocation counts, offline reallocation and probational counts, for the people who are to lazy to go and find the study..

 

[tcsenter]

Try running the SMART test built into SpeedFan. Its one of the few utilities that appears to interpret SMART values appropriately.

 

[Elixer]

#2 is out since I am not willing to spend a cent.

Interesting about the intel matrix issue. I did use this drive for 1 1/2 years in my laptop with intel matrix before now putting it into my Media Center PC as an OS drive.

You still have to spend $$$, so, might as well get a decent backup device, for when this drive does die, you will at least have all your data saved.