Hard drive questions -ERROR "Reallocated Sectors Count (JohnLM)

Have a Toshiba Laptop, Just had a new terabyte hard drive installed 2 months ago, when I defrag, it is all of a sudden saying ERROR "Reallocated Sectors Count" What does this mean and what needs to be done to correct? The drive was installed by a computer repair shop.

 

David,
First and foremost thanks for your response. I am using Windows 7, my defrag program I am using is defraggler, when I had the HD replaced Defraggler said I had a disk error and within 3 weeks it failed. I do not know what the new HD make or model is, I can more than likely find out though if need be. The original one was I think: Intel Core i3, if this helps. I will run the app a try here shortly, I am currently bidding 2 schools and crunching for time as usual. Thanks again.

 

Joe, Thank you for your response and the Belarc Advisor. David and Joe this is what it came up with.
WDC WD10JPVX-00JC3TO
(1000.20 GB) drive 0, sn WD-WXD1E63WSUE4, rev 01.01.01A01, SMART (smart underlined) FAILURE (failure in bold red)

 

Joe, Thanks again, I have one more question: Is this the cause of the Reallocated sectors Count also? Or is this a separate issue? (Sorry that was 2 ?'s)

 

Yes I did Run it and it is telling me in the hard drive area "Smart (underlined in blue) Failure (In red font) I was told this was pending failure, so is taking it back to the shop that installed the HDD my next step? I presume.

 

My opinion, derived from much reading of what has been written on the internet, is that a new HD has some "spare capacity" over that specified. This can be used, or some of it be used, to re-map ("swap") bad sectors on the HD for good sectors in the area allocated for that purpose in the "spare area". The result is your HD can work "perfectly" even though it has bad sectors. However, this can only happen a comparatively small number of times before the "spare area" is filled up. Under these circumstances errors are more obvious, like you start seeing "bad sector count exceeded" or similar messages. One of the SMART parameters holds this information (in a coded way - often marks out 5 IIRC) When this SMART parameter exceeds the critical value ("5") the disk fails SMART check. So reallocated sector count could be one of the causes of SMART failure, amongst others. On the internet you may find interpretations of what the SMART parameters mean. WinDLG gives a list of the SMART values, current and past so there is the possibility of seeing any failure developing

I have read, too, that once a disk develops bad sectors, their number increases ever more quickly, and so it's time to replace the disk before you lose some of the contents. HDDs have a common statistical failure pattern over time, which includes the information that if a s disk survives an initial period it's likely to go on for a long time.

For your own interest, to see what bas sector pattern is on your disk (which may take some) use SeaTools for windows (free download from Seagate) Long Generic and/or HD Tune Error Scan, which a gives a pictorial representation (tho' symbolic not a physical map).

However WD may not accept these results and you should as DavidGP says run the tool provided by WD (WinDLG. the extended scan will take more than a few hour if thing go to completion) . If it fails WD SMART, and is under warranty, I think we all agree that it should replaced with a new one (not "made on Friday afternoon")

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1.March.2015