SOLVED Is my HDD about to die ? ( Caution status on CrystalDiskInfo )

Hi,

I have just ran CrystalDiskInfo and noticed " Caution " status of my HDD and I am really wondering if I shall plan on buying a new HDD or just stick to what I have ( in case of a false prediction by the software ).

There are 3 attributes that are shown in yellow ( caution ) as shown in the screenshots down bellow.
1 - Reallocated Sectors Count
2 - Current Pending Sector Count
3 - Uncorrectable Sector Count





My HDD is not new, it served me well since 2010 I think and it's been used for almost 30,000 hours ( 29,764 hours ). Considering the time it served me I wouldnt really be surprised it's living its last days, but I just thought I could use some help here.

Please let me know what you think.

Thanks.

Personally, I would back up the data and replace ASAP.

ATMINSIDE said:

Personally, I would back up the data and replace ASAP.

Click to expand...

Agreed.

If you cannot do so immediately, watch this number hour by hour, day by day to see how fast it is growing.

I had a 2TB Seagate drive that started growing reallocated sectors by a handful (single digits) daily. IIRC it grew to about 2700 before I replaced it. At the time of replacement, it was still operating. (It was one half of a RAID1 backup server and the entire RAID was copied incrementally daily to an off site backup so I was not too concerned about total failure. I had the original and two backups of all of the files it held.)

Internally the drive is reallocating spare sectors to replace those that have gone bad. This is usually accomplished w/out loss of data and except for the SMART results the OS will not see any indication of trouble. Once it runs out of spare sectors things will go downhill real fast. You want to be sure you have replaced the drive before then.

Good luck! (and props to you for monitoring drive health.)

I see, thanks for the advice.

Is it possible that the value of Reallocated Sectors Count gets stuck to where it is now ( 1 ) and dont move any further ?
Also, is there anything I can do to extend the remaining life of the HDD as much as possible ? Maybe having more free space would help ? ( About 88% of my HDD space is used ).

Anyway, I am not on a big budget to spend for a new HDD, can you please check the HDDs bellow and see if they're any good ?
The value ( value in blue, the first one ) shown in the links is in Macedonian Denars ( MKD ), $1 = 55 MKD.
https://www.google.com/#safe=active&q=$1+to+mkd

http://setec.mk/Computers-IT/PC-and-PC-equipment/Hard-Disks/HDD-500GB-Hitachi-7200rpm38198
http://setec.mk/Computers-IT/PC-and-PC-equipment/Hard-Disks/HDD-750GB-Seagate-7200rpm38701
http://setec.mk/Computers-IT/PC-and-PC-equipment/Hard-Disks/HDD-500GB-Toshiba38420
http://setec.mk/Computers-IT/PC-and-PC-equipment/Hard-Disks/HDD-25-500GB-HITACHI42379
http://setec.mk/Computers-IT/PC-and-PC-equipment/Hard-Disks/HDD-1TB-Toshiba-7200rpm38264

I use my PC for video editing, everyday stuffs use and every now and then gaming.
I guess I'll be just fine with 500GB HDD since that is what I currently have but the price difference between the HDD in the first and the last link above is not big, just $7 difference.

Is there any big difference between 2.5" and 3.5" HDD ?
What about the cache size ? Most of those I listed are 16MB cache, is that enough ?

Im not sure of the read/ write speed of those HDDs above but I guess they'll be pretty much similar to my current HDD.
https://postimg.org/image/x3rlaxa9p/

Please let me know if any of those HDDs are good

Those HDDs are all older and slower. Ideally, you want a 1TB drive with 64MB cache and 7200RPM.

I googled the difference between HDDs with 64MB and 32MB cache and turns out in real use there is not a big difference, I mean it can hardly be seen.
Does that make sense ?

As I said in my case I am not on a big budget so now I am thinking to get one of these 2 drives.

This one costs $54, 1TB and 32MB cache
http://setec.mk/Computers-IT/PC-and-PC-equipment/Hard-Disks/HDD-1TB-Toshiba-7200rpm38264

This one is $60, 500GB and 64MB cache
http://setec.mk/Computers-IT/PC-and-PC-equipment/Hard-Disks/HDD-500GB-WesternDigital38217

Both of them are 3.5" sized and have the same rotation speed - 7200 RPM.

Would you advise me to go for the one with 2x less storage but 2x more cache size or get the other one ?
Let's say I buy the HDD with more cache, is there any way I can find out what the read/ write speed would be ?

Also, I can buy the following HDD for $52 ( USED, 1270 hours )
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148840

Buy the larger capacity drive.

Vladimir 1 said:

Is it possible that the value of Reallocated Sectors Count gets stuck to where it is now ( 1 ) and dont move any further ?

Click to expand...

Yes. I have a near ten year old 200GB Seagate Barracuda that developed 14 remapped sectors and logged a bunch of errors early in life. It has never gotten worse. I think the errors occurred during a power brownout.

Thanks a lot guys.

I'll give my HDD some time to see how it goes, whether the value of Reallocated Sectors Count will increase or stay to where it is.

I'll also look forward to buy the following HDD:
http://setec.mk/Computers-IT/PC-and-PC-equipment/Hard-Disks/HDD-1TB-WesternDigital38227

I guess that'll be good enough and it also fits my budget, it costs $58.

Thanks again for the help, I'll mark my thread as solved now.