Maintaining HDDs against Sector Damages

[Stellar_Dominus]

Hello! I have a new WD Caviar Blue 1TB Hard Drive and it has been damaged with 4 bad sectors. I have placed RMA for it because it was acting weird when using Windows 10.

Since then, I have been curious about how Hard Disks get those bad sectors and how those kind of bad sectors are really repaired? Are they physically repaired like removing platters or else just by factory's software that repair sectors? I contacted WD support and they said they will be giving me a "Recertified" HDD which I hope it will be good. My HDD is new but got bad sectors after few days of usage. Faced several issues in sudden OS corruptions and driven into 'Windows Automatic Repair' everytime I reset my PC.

Can anyone please explain how I can avoid those problems? Also, is there any chance that Hard Disks could get bad sectors even if they are maintained very well enough like no power outages at all? What about you pals, having any bad sectors or your HDDs were all fine with not even a single bad sector? Please explain me deeply.

I'm planning on getting a SSD, which I never got before. (Will be using it for OS mainly)

Thank you.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Mechanical HDD platters have defects. That's just how it is. They have two categories of defects. Factory defects, and "grown" defects. Factory defects, are errors in the platters, that are mapped out at the factory, by the firmware. You normally cannot see the factory defect list. Therefore, to the host computer, the HDD appears "perfect". But it's really not.

The next type are "grown" defects. That's what you're seeing here. First, they get put on the pending re-allocation list, then once you write to those sectors, they get re-allocated from the "spare" sector list. (Yeah, there are hidden "spare" sectors in the factory track maps, designed for just this.)

But the truth is, when a HDD "grows" defects, it could be due to a multitude of reasons, and in many / most cases, that means that the HDD is in the process of failing, and should be replaced, as you not-so-subtly found out.

 

[Stellar_Dominus]

Mechanical HDD platters have defects. That's just how it is. They have two categories of defects. Factory defects, and "grown" defects. Factory defects, are errors in the platters, that are mapped out at the factory, by the firmware. You normally cannot see the factory defect list. Therefore, to the host computer, the HDD appears "perfect". But it's really not.

The next type are "grown" defects. That's what you're seeing here. First, they get put on the pending re-allocation list, then once you write to those sectors, they get re-allocated from the "spare" sector list. (Yeah, there are hidden "spare" sectors in the factory track maps, designed for just this.)

But the truth is, when a HDD "grows" defects, it could be due to a multitude of reasons, and in many / most cases, that means that the HDD is in the process of failing, and should be replaced, as you not-so-subtly found out.

Thank you for the explanation. I also checked S.M.A.R.T. for details and found 4 Pending Re-allocation and 4 Uncorrectable sectors in RAW values. Anyway, I have applied for RMA but they will be giving me a Refurbished Drive. Will that be a good drive with no sector damages, really? I mean will they reconstruct the platters physically? O_O

 

[VirtualLarry]

Will that be a good drive with no sector damages, really? I mean will they reconstruct the platters physically? O_O

No, it won't be a re-constructed drive. It will be a drive, that they have tested, and moved the grown defects into the factory defect map, such that it appears "perfect" when you get it.

 

[Sheep221]

I guess backing up your data is only solution that will work, other than that one my drive that was barely used and suddenly became plagued with bad sectors, drive was Samsung with IDE, than I got 2 Toshiba SATA and they also failed within a week of each other after about a year of basic use, all were 2.5" if that counts.
More reasons can be cause for bad sectors, power blackouts are common reason but so are manufacturing defects, they make millions of hard disks daily so some of them will be bad, they can also be easily damaged If any strong magnet is put nearby or they are dropped or hit with something. Sometimes HDD's breathing hole is taped with something like corporate label/inventory number, which can result in catastrophic collapse of head on the platters and destroying them.
What they meant by recerftified is probably refurbished HDD that was barely used or was open box and was returned, they still do test it for performance and durability and if everything is ok, they sell it as refurbished.
Repairing platters or selling worn out drives that are still functional is something they could not afford to do. Best however is to go to their site and read about their RMA terms of service.

 

[Stellar_Dominus]

I guess backing up your data is only solution that will work, other than that one my drive that was barely used and suddenly became plagued with bad sectors, drive was Samsung with IDE, than I got 2 Toshiba SATA and they also failed within a week of each other after about a year of basic use, all were 2.5" if that counts.
More reasons can be cause for bad sectors, power blackouts are common reason but so are manufacturing defects, they make millions of hard disks daily so some of them will be bad, they can also be easily damaged If any strong magnet is put nearby or they are dropped or hit with something. Sometimes HDD's breathing hole is taped with something like corporate label/inventory number, which can result in catastrophic collapse of head on the platters and destroying them.
What they meant by recerftified is probably refurbished HDD that was barely used or was open box and was returned, they still do test it for performance and durability and if everything is ok, they sell it as refurbished.
Repairing platters or selling worn out drives that are still functional is something they could not afford to do. Best however is to go to their site and read about their RMA terms of service.

Oh well, I think Hard Disks are the sensitive parts than any other parts in the PC, which are sensitive to maintain, haha. Maybe SSDs are stronger/durable than HDDs apart from the limited number of writes. However, I'll be using a SSD as a boot drive and refurbished drive as other storage like everyone does. Thank you.

 

[Stellar_Dominus]

No, it won't be a re-constructed drive. It will be a drive, that they have tested, and moved the grown defects into the factory defect map, such that it appears "perfect" when you get it.

"Appears" perfect? So, the one I will receive (refurbished) isn't a perfect drive either and I can't trust the data that I store. Glad the SSDs were discovered.

 

[Sheep221]

Oh well, I think Hard Disks are the sensitive parts than any other parts in the PC, which are sensitive to maintain, haha. Maybe SSDs are stronger/durable than HDDs apart from the limited number of writes. However, I'll be using a SSD as a boot drive and refurbished drive as other storage like everyone does. Thank you.

SSD have their issues too, early sand force controllers were terrible and basically died randomly, I bought at the time good consumer SSD (Agility 3) which died after 1 day, it's replacement however works to this day. SSDs can suddenly die too, or can suffer from performance problems earlier than HDDs. Although I consider anything computer related very durable and reliable, it's error prone anyways, that's why data centers are so large, because for every storage drive they host, they also have 2 additional backups. They do backups daily or twice per day in case of failure happening suddenly.
A cloud storage corporation called BackBlaze annually publishes their data center experience with hard drives, it's worth looking in to.

 

[Stellar_Dominus]

SSD have their issues too, early sand force controllers were terrible and basically died randomly, I bought at the time good consumer SSD (Agility 3) which died after 1 day, it's replacement however works to this day. SSDs can suddenly die too, or can suffer from performance problems earlier than HDDs. Although I consider anything computer related very durable and reliable, it's error prone anyways, that's why data centers are so large, because for every storage drive they host, they also have 2 additional backups. They do backups daily or twice per day in case of failure happening suddenly.
A cloud storage corporation called BackBlaze annually publishes their data center experience with hard drives, it's worth looking in to.

Thank you for the information. So, no drive is really perfect.

Here is my PC:
Intel Core i5-6500
ASUS MAXIMUS VIII RANGER Motherboard
Kingston HyperX Fury 16GB (8x2) 2133 MHz

I am willing to buy a SAMSUNG 850 PRO 256GB SSD and I will be receiving recertified WD Caviar Blue 1TB HDD soon. Is this storage setup any good in durability? Of course, performance will be good anyway. What do you think? I will be installing OS, programs and games on SSD and will be using HDD as other storage. And I chose SAMSUNG PRO because, this model contains 'MLC' layer cells which is told that has increased life span where EVO model has 'TLC' layer cells which has limited life span. What do you say? Should I save money by getting EVO?

 

[VirtualLarry]

"Appears" perfect? So, the one I will receive (refurbished) isn't a perfect drive either and I can't trust the data that I store. Glad the SSDs were discovered.

As I said initially, no HDD is perfect. They all have defect maps. By "appears perfect", I meant that there will not be any host-visible bad sectors. Meaning, that if the drive had any bad sectors in it's previous life with a former owner, then those defects would have been merged with the factory defect map, and the grown defect list would be empty.

Edit: This is true with SSDs too.

 

[Sheep221]

Thank you for the information. So, no drive is really perfect.

Here is my PC:
Intel Core i5-6500
ASUS MAXIMUS VIII RANGER Motherboard
Kingston HyperX Fury 16GB (8x2) 2133 MHz

I am willing to buy a SAMSUNG 850 PRO 256GB SSD and I will be receiving recertified WD Caviar Blue 1TB HDD soon. Is this storage setup any good in durability? Of course, performance will be good anyway. What do you think? I will be installing OS, programs and games on SSD and will be using HDD as other storage. And I chose SAMSUNG PRO because, this model contains 'MLC' layer cells which is told that has increased life span where EVO model has 'TLC' layer cells which has limited life span. What do you say? Should I save money by getting EVO?

Difference between EVO and PRO is prolonged warranty. 120 - 250GB EVO models have warranty of 75 TBW(Terabyte-writes) and 5 year warranty while PRO versions get the warranty doubled to 150 TBW and 10 year warranty. Higher capacity drives have also increased TBWs but not the warranty time which is logical I guess.
To get it to perspective what this means, I have 850 EVO 500GB which has 150 TBW warranty, which I bought about a year ago and used daily both as system and storage drive. After a year It reports to have 1.5 TB of total data written to it, so this means that I would use guaranteed(it does not mean it automatically fails after that) writing durability of memory cells with this rate in about 100 years, or 50 if I had 250 GB model or 25 if I would double my data writing use on 250 GB model, and those are the cheaper EVO models. In all seriousness they are so durable that it is not reasonable to buy PRO unless you can get in on really good rebate or promo or you plan to put them to some server or some other heavy use. They are so durable that reviewers could not test their durability because even with induced heavy data work they could not measure any performance degradation or reach warranty specification in reasonable time period.
As for the drive itself, I can recommend getting 850 Evo it's really fast and works well so far.

 

[Stellar_Dominus]

As I said initially, no HDD is perfect. They all have defect maps. By "appears perfect", I meant that there will not be any host-visible bad sectors. Meaning, that if the drive had any bad sectors in it's previous life with a former owner, then those defects would have been merged with the factory defect map, and the grown defect list would be empty.

Edit: This is true with SSDs too.

They just make the defects invisible? Wouldn't that cause problems to the consumers? Anyway, we need to be careful and backup data, that's it. Thanks for the information, pal.

 

[Stellar_Dominus]

Difference between EVO and PRO is prolonged warranty. 120 - 250GB EVO models have warranty of 75 TBW(Terabyte-writes) and 5 year warranty while PRO versions get the warranty doubled to 150 TBW and 10 year warranty. Higher capacity drives have also increased TBWs but not the warranty time which is logical I guess.
To get it to perspective what this means, I have 850 EVO 500GB which has 150 TBW warranty, which I bought about a year ago and used daily both as system and storage drive. After a year It reports to have 1.5 TB of total data written to it, so this means that I would use guaranteed(it does not mean it automatically fails after that) writing durability of memory cells with this rate in about 100 years, or 50 if I had 250 GB model or 25 if I would double my data writing use on 250 GB model, and those are the cheaper EVO models. In all seriousness they are so durable that it is not reasonable to buy PRO unless you can get in on really good rebate or promo or you plan to put them to some server or some other heavy use. They are so durable that reviewers could not test their durability because even with induced heavy data work they could not measure any performance degradation or reach warranty specification in reasonable time period.
As for the drive itself, I can recommend getting 850 Evo it's really fast and works well so far.

Alright, I will maintain SSD carefully. Thank you for providing the information pal!

 

[dave_the_nerd]

They just make the defects invisible? Wouldn't that cause problems to the consumers? Anyway, we need to be careful and backup data, that's it. Thanks for the information, pal.

The drive uses the defect map to avoid writing data to the defective sectors, so your data is ok.

But hard drives are essentially disposable. Think of them that way and you'll be happier.

 

[WilliamM2]

They just make the defects invisible? Wouldn't that cause problems to the consumers? Anyway, we need to be careful and backup data, that's it. Thanks for the information, pal.

If it's a new drive, why not just return it? I've had horrible luck with refurbished drives at work, especially form WD. They usually only last a couple of months. These days, if we can still return them to the retailer we do, otherwise we just throw them away. Not worth the time and shipping to get a refurb.

 

[Stellar_Dominus]

If it's a new drive, why not just return it? I've had horrible luck with refurbished drives at work, especially form WD. They usually only last a couple of months. These days, if we can still return them to the retailer we do, otherwise we just throw them away. Not worth the time and shipping to get a refurb.

I bought it from Amazon and the Return time is over. What problems did you had? Is it a good choice to get Seagate Firecuda or Barracuda?

 

[WilliamM2]

I bought it from Amazon and the Return time is over. What problems did you had? Is it a good choice to get Seagate Firecuda or Barracuda?

The problem I listed. They usually only last a couple of months. That goes for all brands of refurb drives.

 

[bononos]

......
Can anyone please explain how I can avoid those problems? Also, is there any chance that Hard Disks could get bad sectors even if they are maintained very well enough like no power outages at all? What about you pals, having any bad sectors or your HDDs were all fine with not even a single bad sector? Please explain me deeply.

I'm planning on getting a SSD, which I never got before. (Will be using it for OS mainly)
Thank you.

Avoid bumping/moving your pc while it is on, set your pc to sleep temporarily if you need to move it. Harddrives nowadays are just too sensitive to small shocks.

 

[mikeymikec]

Difference between EVO and PRO is prolonged warranty.

Nope.

http://www.legitreviews.com/samsung-850-pro-2tb-ssd-vs-samsung-850-evo-2tb-ssd_167612/13

 

[Sheep221]

Nope.

http://www.legitreviews.com/samsung-850-pro-2tb-ssd-vs-samsung-850-evo-2tb-ssd_167612/13

Not sure what are you referring to. According to your link I'm right. Warranty is mentioned in your link as huge slapstick to everyone's face, pro has 10 yr warranty while evo has 5.

 

[mikeymikec]

Not sure what are you referring to. According to your link I'm right. Warranty is mentioned in your link as huge slapstick to everyone's face, pro has 10 yr warranty while evo has 5.

You didn't get very far, did you? The second sentence says this:

The drives use the same Samsung MHX controller with 2GB of cache, so the major difference between the drives is that the 850 PRO uses 2bit MLC NAND and the 850 EVO uses 3bit TLC NAND

- edit - I realise in hindsight that you probably thought I was disputing the warranty figures, when in fact I was disputing your "the difference between the two is". I didn't bother to post specific quotes before because the page I linked to does a perfectly good job of describing the differences AFAIK.

 

[Sheep221]

It's obvious that things covered with longer warranty are made from better components, in this case it is a higher endurance flash. Different flash used in PRO is there solely for achieving longer warranty and durability. But if you want to explain difference to a potential customer, it's simple and honest to say.

Difference between EVO and PRO is prolonged warranty.

Than this pile of bs

The Samsung SSD 850 PRO and 850 EVO 2TB SSDs were found to be two very solid performing SSDs. The drives use the same Samsung MHX controller with 2GB of cache, so the major difference between the drives is that the 850 PRO uses 2bit MLC NAND and the 850 EVO uses 3bit TLC NAND

I avoided mentioning the exact flash types on purpose, because they are irrelevant for this case. It's longer warranty and durability the OP is after, if Samsung achieved it by installing different flash chips or putting small dildo inside is not important for customer as long as the properties he wants are there.
Many don't like this thought pattern of mine but I do skip technical background if I can just go on properties of final product, in this case I could.
You could simply add to discussion that longer warranty was done by means of using different flash in the PROs.
Oh btw, both I and OP were aware of different flash chips.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

It's longer warranty and durability the OP is after

I'll just point out that a warranty will not help you if the drive decides to pack-up suddenly. Taking your data with it...

If it is reliability you're after, RAID will protect you from drive failure, and a proper backup system against data loss.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

It's obvious that things covered with longer warranty are made from better components, in this case it is a higher endurance flash. Different flash used in PRO is there solely for achieving longer warranty and durability. But if you want to explain difference to a potential customer, it's simple and honest to say.

Than this pile of bs

I avoided mentioning the exact flash types on purpose, because they are irrelevant for this case. It's longer warranty and durability the OP is after, if Samsung achieved it by installing different flash chips or putting small dildo inside is not important for customer as long as the properties he wants are there.
Many don't like this thought pattern of mine but I do skip technical background if I can just go on properties of final product, in this case I could.
You could simply add to discussion that longer warranty was done by means of using different flash in the PROs.
Oh btw, both I and OP were aware of different flash chips.

Pretty sure the different flash on the 850 Pro also made it a tad faster...

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1415?vs=1700