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(Help) Are my Maxtor hard drives failing?

C

cessation

Member
I have a 3 drives that are getting "critical" errors according to few websites. So is it time to ditch these drives and move my data? I really don't want to buy new drives, hell two of these drives getting errors aren't that old. Any suggestions or tips?

Well here are the errors.

Notice all the errors are
(05) Reallocated Sector Count)

HD Tune: MAXTOR 6L080J4 Health

ID Current Worst ThresholdData Status
(01) Raw Read Error Rate 100 253 20 0 Ok
(03) Spin Up Time 65 63 20 4412 Ok
(04) Start/Stop Count 99 99 8 773 Ok
(05) Reallocated Sector Count 100 100 20 3 Failed
(07) Seek Error Rate 100 100 23 0 Ok
(09) Power On Hours Count 55 55 1 29830 Ok
(0A) Spin Retry Count 100 100 0 0 Ok
(0B) Calibration Retry Count 100 100 20 0 Ok
(0C) Power Cycle Count 99 99 8 773 Ok
(0D) Soft Read Error Rate 100 100 23 0 Ok
(C2) Temperature 87 83 42 34 Ok
(C3) Hardware ECC Recovered 100 7 0 4296963 Ok
(C4) Reallocated Event Count 100 253 20 0 Ok
(C5) Current Pending Sector 100 100 20 0 Ok
(C6) Offline Uncorrectable 100 253 0 0 Ok
(C7) Ultra DMA CRC Error Count 160 160 0 40 Ok

Power On Time : 29830
Health Status : Failed
-------------------------------------------------------------------------


HD Tune: Maxtor 6Y160P0 Health

ID Current Worst ThresholdData Status
(03) Spin Up Time 221 202 63 8725 Ok
(04) Start/Stop Count 253 253 0 566 Ok
(05) Reallocated Sector Count 253 249 63 10 Failed
(06) Read Channel Margin 253 253 100 0 Ok
(07) Seek Error Rate 253 252 0 0 Ok
(08) Seek Time Performance 253 248 187 38963 Ok
(09) Power On Hours Count 217 217 0 33005 Ok
(0A) Spin Retry Count 253 252 157 0 Ok
(0B) Calibration Retry Count 253 252 223 0 Ok
(0C) Power Cycle Count 249 249 0 1833 Ok
(C0) Power Off Retract Count 253 253 0 0 Ok
(C1) Load Cycle Count 253 253 0 0 Ok
(C2) Temperature 253 253 0 27 Ok
(C3) Hardware ECC Recovered 253 252 0 4081 Ok
(C4) Reallocated Event Count 246 246 0 7 Ok
(C5) Current Pending Sector 253 250 0 8 Ok
(C6) Offline Uncorrectable 106 106 0 147 Ok
(C7) Ultra DMA CRC Error Count 199 199 0 0 Ok
(C8) Write Error Rate 253 252 0 0 Ok
(C9) (unknown attribute) 253 250 0 16 Ok
(CA) (unknown attribute) 253 223 0 0 Ok
(CB) (unknown attribute) 253 252 180 14 Ok
(CC) (unknown attribute) 253 252 0 0 Ok
(CD) (unknown attribute) 253 252 0 0 Ok
(CF) (unknown attribute) 253 252 0 0 Ok
(D0) (unknown attribute) 253 252 0 0 Ok
(D1) (unknown attribute) 197 190 0 0 Ok
(63) (unknown attribute) 253 253 0 0 Ok
(64) (unknown attribute) 253 253 0 0 Ok
(65) (unknown attribute) 253 253 0 0 Ok

Power On Time : 33005
Health Status : Failed
---------------------------------------------------------------------------


HD Tune: Maxtor 6Y160P0 Health

ID Current Worst ThresholdData Status
(03) Spin Up Time 174 173 63 18482 Ok
(04) Start/Stop Count 253 253 0 107 Ok
(05) Reallocated Sector Count 253 253 63 9 Failed
(06) Read Channel Margin 253 253 100 0 Ok
(07) Seek Error Rate 253 252 0 0 Ok
(08) Seek Time Performance 252 240 187 54976 Ok
(09) Power On Hours Count 214 214 0 29103 Ok
(0A) Spin Retry Count 253 252 157 0 Ok
(0B) Calibration Retry Count 253 252 223 0 Ok
(0C) Power Cycle Count 252 252 0 442 Ok
(C0) Power Off Retract Count 253 253 0 0 Ok
(C1) Load Cycle Count 253 253 0 0 Ok
(C2) Temperature 253 253 0 26 Ok
(C3) Hardware ECC Recovered 253 252 0 3514 Ok
(C4) Reallocated Event Count 249 249 0 4 Ok
(C5) Current Pending Sector 253 253 0 0 Ok
(C6) Offline Uncorrectable 239 239 0 14 Ok
(C7) Ultra DMA CRC Error Count 199 199 0 0 Ok
(C8) Write Error Rate 253 252 0 0 Ok
(C9) (unknown attribute) 253 235 0 585 Ok
(CA) (unknown attribute) 253 252 0 0 Ok
(CB) (unknown attribute) 253 252 180 26 Ok
(CC) (unknown attribute) 253 252 0 0 Ok
(CD) (unknown attribute) 253 252 0 0 Ok
(CF) (unknown attribute) 253 252 0 0 Ok
(D0) (unknown attribute) 253 252 0 0 Ok
(D1) (unknown attribute) 206 205 0 0 Ok
(63) (unknown attribute) 253 253 0 0 Ok
(64) (unknown attribute) 253 253 0 0 Ok
(65) (unknown attribute) 253 253 0 0 Ok

Power On Time : 29103
Health Status : Failed
 
Reallocated sector count would indicate that there were bad sectors, which all hard drives now are designed to map out and not use (they have a spare few tracks so that the actual amount of space doesn't decrease).

Use Maxtor's PowerMax diagnostics on it.
 
Think I found my answer. The current value can't get below the threshold or data can be lost from drive failing. If I'm wrong someone please correct me 🙂


Thanks Lord Evermore I'll try that.
 
HaHa
Those tools want to create a floppy. I don't think I've used one in over 3 years. It won't let me extract them to a CD either otherwise I'd just use a boot disk and load the tools. Oh well thanks again for the suggestion LE.

Oh and I don't think I even have a floppy drive in closet. lol...
 
Powermax has an ISO image version. Aside from that, you're pretty much f'ing yourself if you say there's no way you'll use a floppy even if it means your computer fails on you.
 
cessation,
First it the _data_ column that tells you how many bad/reallocated sectors (3,10,9 bad sectors).

3, 10 and 9 reallocated sectors aren't excessive if the drives have been running for a while. My rma'd seagate had over 70 before I backed it up and pulled the plug. The problem is when you get a whole bunch of bad sectors in a short period of time.

Hdtune and other 3rd party diagnostics can't accurately decipher SMART data. The threshold column isn't necessarily the maximum value before a warning gets issued. In my case seagates diskwizard utility warned me that the drive was going to kaput several times.
 
Thanks Orangat,

All my drives have been under a lot of use. I edit a lot of home videos and stuff like that.

The 160 gig drives have been used for about 2 years. The 80 gig about 4 years old I'd guess.

If someone could tell me am I right about the value of say the second drive having to hit 63 before it's failing? If I'm guessing right the current value of 253 would have to fall to 63 before it's really bad news. I mean according to HD Tune, even though it's not accurate.

I found the iso image for powermax I'll load that up and see what it says.
 
When all is said and done, if you have the drive backed up or imaged, you might also try using FDISK /MBR command and see if that helps. It wipes the first section of the MBR clean. In some cases, the MBR gets something into it's head and won't let it out. It is VERY useful when going from FAT to NTFS or vice versus.
 
Originally posted by: cessation
Thanks Orangat,

All my drives have been under a lot of use. I edit a lot of home videos and stuff like that.

The 160 gig drives have been used for about 2 years. The 80 gig about 4 years old I'd guess.

If someone could tell me am I right about the value of say the second drive having to hit 63 before it's failing? If I'm guessing right the current value of 253 would have to fall to 63 before it's really bad news. I mean according to HD Tune, even though it's not accurate.

I found the iso image for powermax I'll load that up and see what it says.
Click to expand...

You got it wrong. The data column is the one which you should be looking at. So you have 3, 10, 9 bad sectors on your drives. All the other columns are mostly useless. You don't have to wait for the number of bad sectors to exceed 63 before pulling the plug. The rate of bad sectors accumulating is much more important.

HDtune doesn't really what passes for bad. My wild guess in your case is that a bad sector a day for several days would be really bad.
 
The MBR has absolutely nothing to do with SMART data, or bad sector management. The MBR is file system and partition related.

If you've got the drive backed up (an image being the best way for this purpose), you can use the complete verification scan in PowerMax to test every sector. It writes and reads every sector to verify they're good. This might find that there are no more bad sectors, or it could cause some sectors that are on the verge of failing to go bad (which would cause data loss). But at least you can be reasonably sure of the quality of the drive.

Reallocated sectors may actually exist out of the box, I'm not sure. The spare sectors are available during manufacturing since it's not possible to make a perfect drive, but I'm not sure if sectors which are reallocated during manufacturing are recorded so that the user could see that number.
 
Well I tried scanning with powermax. Problem is I get stuck on the screen that says scanning for drives, this can take 1 min. I let it sit there for 10 mins. I then reset and waited 15 mins for it to find my drives. I'm not sure if it would need drivers but I didn't see it say anything about controller drivers.

btw I'm using a nforce4 A8N-Deluxe mobo. I have a few drives plugged into IDE, a few plugged into SATA and few plugged into a old promise card.

Oh well I might just end up depending on other software, wish maxtor's worked though.
 
The PowerMax software uses standard IDE drivers, which is also why you can't use it or any other manufacturer's software in order to diagnose drives if you have them connected to an expansion card. It will only search the integrated ports. If you have the SATA drives on ports that are part of the Silicon Image controller instead of the nvidia controller, this may be the problem. I'm not sure if the diagnostics will even work with newer chipsets where you could have 2 full IDE channels as well as integrated SATA ports.

As a test, you could go into the BIOS and disable all the non-standard IDE controllers (integrated SATA and the SI RAID ports) and see if the diag will detect the drives on the standard ports.
 
Personally, I will back up the data and then using Maxtor Diag Utility, Re-zero all the HDD. After the zeroing and the errors are still there, it means the hdd are failing and time to get new ones.
 
I got the powermax tools workin. It won't load when the default nvidia SATA controller is enabled. It does work fine with the normal MB IDE connectors and my old promise card works with the tools too.

I have some of these on the SATA connections, so I guess that might be why it locks up when SATA is enabled. Oh well not a big deal.

But thx for help guys, I'll back up my data and do a low level format with these tools. Thing that sucks is one of the drives with errors is my main windows drive, that one is gonna be pain to back up. I guess I need to find some tools like norton ghost or something.

I did a quick test with powermax on 2 of the drives and powermax didn't give me any errors.
 
You can't do a low level format. I doubt there is a utility available for current drives. Even advertised low level format utilities do nothing more than zeroing a harddisk. Its all high level format these days.


 
I am having trouble with my Maxtor 160GB drive. This drive is a slave on IDE1. The computer is taking several minutes to boot. Sometimes the drive does not even show up in Windows. The drive letters even changed on me. The Windows Error-Checking program can't even be run on the first partition without aborting. The other three partitions test OK.

I made a bootable CD and am running Powermax on the drive right now. The Basic Quick test and the Advanced Test both passed! I'll try Norton's disk doctor next.

Available Tests:
1. Installation Confirmation
2. Basic Quick (90 Second) Test
3. Advanced Test (Full Scan Test)
4. Burn In Test
5. Low Level Format (Quick)
6. Low Level format (Full)

Note:

PowerMax will identify drives connected to most Promise, CMD, and Highpoint ATA or SATA controllers. PowerMax v 4.21 will not detect ATA or SATA hard disks connected to embedded or add in RAID controllers, NVIDIA Force 3, or Force 4 chipsets.
 
Originally posted by: cessation
Uh the powermax utility said full low level format or quick low level format. I'd take a screenshot but lol, dont think I have to explain that. I could use my camera I guess. 🙂

It's probably not the same low level format that Maxtor does. But I was just saying what the utility had as options.

Here we go it's on Maxtors site too.

http://www.maxtor.com/en/support/downloads/powermax.htm
Click to expand...


Fine. I was just clarifying in case you didn't know.
If you call Maxtor, I will guarantee 100% tech support will tell you that powermax low level format does not rewrite the sectors and tracks.

I think you are freaking out too much. A low level format take hours to complete. Even zeroing out the data takes a long time. Run a complete surface scan with powermax is the best thing to do. It not like you have 50 bad sectors.
 
Well powermax says the drives are failing and that I do need to send them back to maxtor or replace them.

I'm not exactly freaking out either 😛

I just don't want to replace these drives any time soon and it looks like I will have to do so. The thing that really sucks is I bought these drives back when Maxtor had 1 year warranties for awhile. So now I'm out 2 160 gig drives and one 80 gig. I'll probably be buying seagate next time...
 
Originally posted by: cessation
Well powermax says the drives are failing and that I do need to send them back to maxtor or replace them.

I'm not exactly freaking out either 😛

I just don't want to replace these drives any time soon and it looks like I will have to do so. The thing that really sucks is I bought these drives back when Maxtor had 1 year warranties for awhile. So now I'm out 2 160 gig drives and one 80 gig. I'll probably be buying seagate next time...
Click to expand...


Well if powermax says its failing then its time to freak out. 😛

But seriously you may have some time. I waited a couple of months just to see what happened to the seagate. In my case the bad sectors kept accumulating but weeks went by without anything happening and performance was still reasonably ok until it started hanging abit.
 
I thought when all the manufacturers did the 1 year warranty thing, they all went back to 3 year warranty and made it retroactive on the drives that were sold as 1 year. It can't hurt to find out for sure if you're out of warranty.

At least an RMA is easy with hard drives. You just validate each drive online, give them a credit card number, and they'll ship a replacement drive to you and give you 30 days to send the bad one. Unfortunately it's usually a refurbished drive.

All drive brands have problems. Maxtor doesn't really have any significant difference in failure rates overall, and the other companies are trying to screw you over when possible just as much.
 
Any suggestions on what software to use for copying one drive to another? I know about norton ghost but I was wondering if there is something better maybe.
 
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