WD Raptor 150GB, Issue with Spin Retry Count

[ZealPath]

Hello there, recently Vista has been giving me warning messages about how my "hard drive might fail soon" so I decided to look into it. According to DiskCheckup, the issue is with the "Spin Retry Count", my values are as follows:

SMART ATTRIBUTES:
ID Description Raw Value Status Value Worst Threshold TEC
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 Raw Read Error Rate 0 OK 200 200 51 N.A.
3 Spin Up Time 4641ms OK 168 166 21 N.A.
4 Start/Stop Count 659 OK 100 100 40 N.A.
5 Reallocated Sector Count 0 OK 200 200 140 N.A.
7 Seek Error Rate 0 OK 200 1 51 N.A.
9 Power On Time 8423 OK 89 89 0 N.A.
A Spin Retry Count 2048 FAIL 12 10 51 N.A.
B Calibration Retry Count 0 OK 100 100 51 N.A.
C Power Cycle Count 652 OK 100 100 0 N.A.
C2 Temperature 44 C OK 103 95 0 N.A.
C4 Reallocation Event Count 0 OK 200 200 0 N.A.
C5 Current Pending Sector Count 0 OK 200 200 0 N.A.
C6 Uncorrectable Sector Count 0 OK 200 200 0 N.A.
C7 UltraDMA CRC Error Count 0 OK 200 253 0 N.A.
C8 Write Error Count 0 OK 200 200 51 N.A.

It has been about 2 weeks since I first saw the "possible failure" message and nothing performance-wise appears to have changed. No data has disappeared, there haven't been any odd error messages aside from the Vista warning, and my drive is still as fast as it ever was (I'm sure I'd notice if it wasn't since I'm very picky about loading speeds which is why I got the Raptor in the first place). In any case I'm not particularly informed when it comes to these SMART attributes so if someone could advise me on whether or not you think my drive is truly in danger I would appreciate it.

[David (PassMark)]

Yes I do think your drive is at a higher risk of total failure. But it might also continue to work for a long time. Is your power supply big enough? Maybe on power up, when all components are pulling a lot of power, there isn't enough power at that voltage level to spin the drive to full speed fast enough.

I would make sure I was keeping good backups, then use the Raptor until it failed.

[ZealPath]

Thanks for the response, I wonder if this could have been brought about by Vista's power plan turning off hard drives after 20 mins of inactivity by default. Now I don't know if it really was turning my drives off after 20 mins but if it was, I wonder if the more frequent turning on and off of the drive could contribute to this issue.

Interestingly enough, even with a custom plan you cannot turn this feature off, although you can increase the number to a large amount... ie 1000 mins, which I have done for now as I'm under the impression that even though it might sound like it makes sense to turn an HD off when not in use, it may wear the drive out faster in the long run due to the more frequent powering on and off (thoughts welcomed).

[David (PassMark)]

Drives should be designed to start and stop many times. I haven't seen any research that indicates that drives last longer if you leave then running all the time.

[Brian]

I have had several Raptors over the years. I got that error on my first raptors (the 8mb cache 10k 36 GB models). My cousin has them now and they are still working fine. I got the drives the first month they were released, and the error occurred well over a year ago, maybe two, and everything is running fine still.

I did a fdisk format and the message never came up again.

Anyway, you should backup your stuff, and contact WD, they have a 5 year manu warrenty. I have heard replacements take awhile though.

-bd