SMART Error in BIOS - but!

[flexy]

Yesterday I had to do an entire PC disassembly just to find that it's actually my monitor's HDMI input that is hosed.

Sys is an old Asus Z87 Pro board

Anyway, after I did all this, I replugged my drives, and one one of them is an old Seagate Barra 7000.11 which now SOMETIMES in BIOS throws a SMART error. Sometimes, the drive also disappears from the list of drives in bios. That wouldn't be much mysterious since anyone knows what it means when a drive throws a SMART error, you would backup your stuff and get a new drive.

What is weird tho is that when I boot with the drive listed in BIOS and the drive then available in Windows (which fortunately is not a critical drive but more or less only has crap on)....I can do tests with Seatools and whatever on this drive and it shows SMART *passed* and also quick self tests etc. pass fine.

Crystaldiskinfo also doesn't show anything extraordinary (correct me if I am wrong) but that one reallocated sector....which is the case with most of my mechanical drives anyway. Saying...I am puzzled why it sometimes throws this SMART error...could be connection/cable related, maybe a gnarly, old SATA cable on that drive?

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Could definitely be a bad cable. But a single reallocated sector shouldn't be causing a "Caution" either.

 

[flexy]

OF COURSE it was just a frickin' SATA cable not plugged all the way in. Feel like an idiot now.

The issue is....every single board I ever had has the SATA ports in the worst place, with the plugs half-obstructed by the GPU and a HD cage as well. So it was actually quite a hassle even just checking the plugs how they're seated...otherwise I'd probably caught this yesterday already.

(COMMON SENSE all pointed to this since I replugged all HDs yesterday when I messed with the PC...and then the stat screen definitely did not show the drive as bad whatsoever, *IF* the system booted with it as showing connected. Today then it entirely disappeared from BIOS...and I was just about to get a new drive...but did a quick double check...and I could plug this particular one 5mm more in...just from looking at it I didn't even see this..odd)

That being said..board layouts....don't get me started with me having to remove my soundcard to remove the battery to do a CMOS reset. WHO DESIGNS THESE...seriously so bad...

 

[flexy]

Yeah as for the reallocated ones, ALL the mechanicals have one or two and show as "caution". Pretty stupid.

 

[Shmee]

The reason it is showing a smart warning is because the bad sector count is non zero. Once a drive starts to develop bad sectors, it usually gets worse from there. I would recommend replacing the drives, or at least backing up the data.

 

[flexy]

Oups..I have to correct a mod...so bear with me

I don't think it would throw a SMART because of 1 reallocated sector. (Then all my mechanicals would throw SMART because they all have 1 reallocated sector. They would throw a SMART when the threshold value is exceeded, for this particular drive 36 reallocated ones). Anyway, as I mentioned above, it was indeed the SATA plug for this drive not entirely plugged in. The drive works fine again like before.
(The "caution" warning in CrystalDiskInfo doesn't mean a SMART warning)

 

[Elixer]

Oups..I have to correct a mod...so bear with me

I don't think it would throw a SMART because of 1 reallocated sector. (Then all my mechanicals would throw SMART because they all have 1 reallocated sector. They would throw a SMART when the threshold value is exceeded, for this particular drive 36 reallocated ones). Anyway, as I mentioned above, it was indeed the SATA plug for this drive not entirely plugged in. The drive works fine again like before.
(The "caution" warning in CrystalDiskInfo doesn't mean a SMART warning)

Erm, no, that isn't correct, what Shmee said was correct.

Those are definitely SMART errors, and 1 reallocated sector is all it takes to trip it, it is a critical parameter.

After their first reallocation, drives are over 14 times more likely to fail within 60 days than drives without reallocation counts, making the critical threshold for this parameter also one.

and...

After the first offline reallocation, drives have over 21 times higher chances of failure within 60 days than drives without offline reallocations; an effect that is again more drastic than total reallocations.

http://static.usenix.org/event/fast07/tech/full_papers/pinheiro/pinheiro_html/

Which pretty much means, that once you get 1 reallocation, chances are much higher that the drive will fail compared to a drive that has 0.