DiskCheckup II

[rch427]

For the past day, I've been getting a message every time I boot that says I'm having a S.M.A.R.T. error. I downloaded and ran DiskCheckup, and these were the results:

IDE REGISTERS:

Features: 0x0 Sector Count: 0x1 Sector Number: 0x1

Cylinder Low: 0x0 Cylinder High: 0x0 Drive Head: 0xA0

Command: 0xEC

DRIVE INFORMATION:

Serial Number: 196034536919

FirmWare Rev: A1Y.1400

Model Number: QUANTUM FIREBALLP AS60.0

Cylinders: 16383 Heads: 16 Sectors per track: 63

Cur Cyls: 16383 Cur Heads: 16 Cur Sectors/Track: 63

Bytes per track: 32256 Bytes per sector: 512

Gen Config: 1114 Buffer Type: 3 Buffer Size: 3804

Vendor Unique: 0 0 5154 More Vendor Unique: 0x8010

ECC Size: 4 Double Word IO: 0 Capabilities: 3840

PIO Timing: 512 DMA Timing: 512 BS: 7

Current Sector Capacity: 16514064 Total Addressable Sectors: 117266688

Mult. Sector Stuff: 272 Single Word DMA: 0 Multi Word DMA: 7

SMART ATTRIBUTES:

ID Description Raw Value Status Value Worst Threshold

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1 Raw Read Error Rate 0 OK 100 253 20

3 Spin Up Time 5691ms OK 55 55 20

4 Start/Stop Count 640 OK 100 100 8

5 Reallocated Sector Count 499 FAIL 1 1 20

7 Seek Error Rate 0 OK 100 100 23

9 Power On Time 27779 OK 58 58 1

A Spin Retry Count 0 OK 100 100 0

B Calibration Retry Count 0 OK 100 100 20

C Power Cycle Count 328 OK 100 100 8

D (Unknown attribute) 0 OK 100 62 23

C3 (Unknown attribute) 206925758 OK 10 1 0

C4 Reallocation Event Count 0 OK 100 253 20

C5 Current Pending Sector Count 2 OK 100 100 20

C6 Offline Scan Incorrect. Sector Count 0 OK 100 253 0

C7 Ultra ATA CRC Error Count 4 OK 196 196 0


Since I couldn't find any information on the PassMark website about how to interpret these results, I thought I'd ask here. Obviously, DiskCheckup thinks something is wrong, as it's saying that the "Reallocated Sector Count" is failing.

1. Just what IS a "Reallocated Sector Count"?

2. Can anything be done to alleviate the problem, or prolong the life of the drive, such as adding cooling?

The drive is 2 years old, out of warranty, and has never had problems of any other kind, nor has it been abused. Any advice you might have would be greatly appreciated.

-- Robert

[David (PassMark)]

Our advice is pretty much same as in this post,
http://www.passmark.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=381

- If it is a new drive ask for a replacement (can't do this in your case).
- If it is an old drive and you don't want to replace it, start keeping good backups of your data. You might need them

> Since I couldn't find any
> information on the PassMark website

Here are the details from the help file that comes with the Diskcheckup software

Reallocated Sector Count
Represents the amount of spare sector pool available. Spare sectors are used to replace sectors that became bad for some reason (for instance, if a read error occurs). Therefore the more sectors reallocated, the worse the condition of the drive.

and from Wikipedia
Count of reallocated sectors. When the hard drive finds a read/write/verification error, it marks this sector as "reallocated" and transfers data to a special reserved area (spare area). This process is also known as remapping and "reallocated" sectors are called remaps. This is why, on a modern hard disks, you can not see "bad blocks" while testing the surface - all bad blocks are hidden in reallocated sectors. However, the more sectors that are reallocated, the more read/write speed will decrease.

No, more cooling is unlikely to fix this problem. Proabably too late for that.

------
David