Reallocated Sectors Count - Time for a new HDD?

[lexluthermiester]

But they tell you how much data they can handle, I read reports of testing done on ssd drives going well beyond their estimated life...

And there have been just as many that did not last as long as they should have. It also depends on the type and quality of the manufacturing process.

 

[Deleted member 191766]

Does it matter that one has Reallocated Sectors Count ?

I expect all drives I get from ebay to have no reallocated sectors

 

[lexluthermiester]

I expect all drives I get from ebay to have no reallocated sectors

Then, again, never buy ANY hard drives. Ever. They ALL have reallocated sectors. Every single one of them. It is an unavoidable fact of hard drive ownership and it always has been.

 

[Rei]

SSD's don't have such a classification. Really sad and desperately needed.

Not yet anyway... Just wait 10+ years until someone comes up with a miraculous elixir-level cell... Or buy the best, longest lasting SSD ever reviewed, then live like I do: make minuscule write-cycle changes to SSD & just let those operational hours rise.

I expect all drives I get from ebay to have no reallocated sectors

Think of HDD as the average humans. They were born without hair but as they get older, they will eventually grow hair in all sorts of unnecessarily unwelcomed places (not that it'd happened to me, mind you). But they do very little, if at all, to hinder you.
Just in case no one got the analogy, the human is the HDD while the hair is the reallocated sectors.
Isn't Ebay an auctions site for second hand products? Do you really expect used HDD to be reallocated sectors-free? They might, but the chances are slim.

 

[Deleted member 191766]

I have a lot of drives from eBay, most have no reallocated sectors.

 

[Rei]

I have a lot of drives from eBay, most have no reallocated sectors.

Then either you got really lucky which your next step is trying your hand at lottery tickets or those are brand new second-hand drives or the previous owner wasn't that intensive with the drive's usage.

 

[lexluthermiester]

Just wait 10+ years until someone comes up with a miraculous elixir-level cell...

The industry will need a miracle much sooner than that...

I have a lot of drives from eBay, most have no reallocated sectors.

Incorrect. ALL of them have reallocated sectors. You just don't know about it because the drive controller is not announcing it to you.

 

[Rei]

Incorrect. ALL of them have reallocated sectors. You just don't know about it because the drive controller is not announcing it to you.

That is certainly what I meant when I mentioned reallocated sector count. It doesn't show, then eventually it does.

@Anwar.Shiekh You also need to keep in mind that regardless if you got a HDD brand new or used, they are most always gonna be empty storage. So even if there are visible reallocated sectors, it just means that sector of the drive can't be used but it doesn't matter anyway since that sector is empty & since that spot is dead, your data won't be put there. If reallocated sectors counts sporadically rises then that means the platter is failing but if it doesn't rise or it rises very, very slowly then your drive is fine. But in most cases, other parts of the drive will die out faster than the platter.

The industry will need a miracle much sooner than that...

Amen, bruh... I really feel like I wanna get a SSD for general storage drive since I shuffle files around a lot between drives & I need the speed to do that. But of course I am not dumb enough to do such write intensive task & expect SSD longevity. As it is now though, I am fine with my current speed limitation. But I do wish that changes soon.

 

[SomeOne99h]

The HDD I am using now: *36578 hours used *8506 Start/Stop Count
And zero errors in everything!

 

[xBruce88x]

@op, download and install Hard disk sentinel. It'll be able to report how many sectors may be bad. It can also tell you exactly how many times data has been remapped due to weak sectors

 

[R-T-B]

Then, again, never buy ANY hard drives. Ever. They ALL have reallocated sectors. Every single one of them. It is an unavoidable fact of hard drive ownership and it always has been.

Yes, but the SMART indicator is precisely for reallocated sectors that occur after the factory format process. I too would not accept a used drive with reallocated sectors in SMART that was claimed to be "like new."

Then again I'd never honestly buy a used drive, so I may not be the best example.

SSD's don't have such a classification. Really sad and desperately needed.

The few that did rated at 2M hours MTBF or equally crazy statistics, just FYI. Most of them were sandforce garbage too, lol.

I would expect that modern SSD they would be a huge jump to perfection regarding robustness and life cycle, which unfortunately they are not.

I can almost promise you my SSD will outlive your drive (especially the one with reallocated sectors already), but meh.

 

[kiriakost]

I can almost promise you my SSD will outlive your drive (especially the one with reallocated sectors already), but meh.

Either way all incoming content among knowledge and proofs they were deposed as assistance to OP who started this topic.
The unbelievers they can follow their own plan what ever this is.
What counts to me this is that the promise of Western Digital to all of us which we invested getting hard drives for small servers, this is solid and true.
Major problem at our era this is that you do not know of whom to believe these days.

The HDD I am using now: *36578 hours used *8506 Start/Stop Count
And zero errors in everything!

This is a proof that when the platters received their final coating at the factory, the room air was better filtered from foreign objects.
And because air filtration stability at HDD manufacturing plans this is a constant factor under surveillance, the HDD they have their own (added-in) in hardware ability to deal with up to 3% of HDD sectors that they might show as unreliable in the first year of operation.

Some they have forgotten of the why after format, they do not see the entire named capacity as usable for storage even with NTFS.
Here ends the delivery of facts from my end.

 

[Deleted member 191766]

And there have been just as many that did not last as long as they should have. It also depends on the type and quality of the manufacturing process.

Its NOT the number of reallocated sectors, it is the CHANGE that counts and is indicating reason for concern.

 

[Rei]

Its NOT the number of reallocated sectors, it is the CHANGE that counts and is indicating reason for concern.

We're on repeat here... If the reallocated counts changes sporadically, then yeah, you should be concerned that the drive is failing. But if the changes is few & far in between, then there is no need to be alarmed. Your drive will still last a good number of years. Other parts of the drive will likely fail faster than the platter section.

 

[Deleted member 191766]

You are right; and I respect people who want to risk the warning signs of failing sectors, for that is exactly what it is, a warning sign. But for me I will replace the drive at the first warning.

 

[Rei]

You are right; and I respect people who want to risk the warning signs of failing sectors, for that is exactly what it is, a warning sign. But for me I will replace the drive at the first warning.

That is a costly dick move for expecting the drive to die out soon when it most likely gonna be 2+ years later.

 

[Deleted member 191766]

Let's say it lasts 4 years, then crudely speaking one might say the chance of failing per month is around 2%.

If it's a gaming machine, that might be acceptable, but if its a work machine...

 

[Rei]

Not really how failure works but whatever floats your boat. That also means that you would change your HDD every year or less.

 

[TheUn4seen]

I have a lot of drives from eBay, most have no reallocated sectors.

If they are WD, the seller probably just reset some counters in S.M.A.R.T. It's actually fairly easy, used WD drives are not trustworthy at all. The new ones also aren't, this damn company lies even about the rotation speed.
But the main issue here is: Why would you even put the word "trust" anywhere near "hard drive"? Never trust a device, always have no less than one up to date backup. Drives often fail immediately, with no preceding signs of problems, and with no backup you're left with fairly expensive recovery as the only option.

Also, drives are binned just as the silicon is. Every platter has imperfections, you might actually figure out where some of them are by running tools like MHDD and looking for slow sectors. Every drive you buy already has damage which is hidden by the controller, and if you see reallocations in smart, there is a high probability of failure. Or it might work for ten more years. I had the infamous Barracuda 7200.10 which started having reallocated sectors around the 500h mark. I used it in several low-priority devices, usually running 24/7 and it was at 147 reallocated with over 35 000 hours when I finally trashed it. This is a game of probability and the only way to win is to have a good backup.

 

[Aquinus]

but if its a work machine...

If it's a work machine and you can't tolerate downtime, then you should be running a RAID array because even a single drive failure, with warnings or not, is going to result in downtime. All we're saying is that you're putting too much emphasis on this one value when you could have a drive failure even without warning signs. I've lost more drives that didn't have any reallocated sectors before failure than ones that do. In fact most of the drives I own that have any reallocated sectors are still working to this day.

 

[xrror]

You all realize that pretty much since the integration of drive controllers to the physical disk packs that the vast vast majority of hard drives already have a hidden "spare area" where they will silently re-locate bad/weak sectors w/o reporting anything to the host, right?

That used to be part of the optimization for near-line / RAID drives was to limit the amount of time that re-alloc would take before the RAID controller kicked the drive out (TLER). Surveillance drives used for recording video are the next step - basically they just don't even try - who cares about a glitch in the vid vs. having the drive drop and losing the feed.

Anyway in the modern day, at least since SMART was implemented, it's been my understanding that you only will see Reallocated Sectors Count increase after that hidden area is exhausted.

So basically yea, that means your drive is still "growing" bad sectors - enough even that the spare area has been exhausted. Now... I have seen a very few drives that did stop growing bad sectors, and actually might still be in service today... but that was the era of 2GB drives. Nothing modern...

I'd replace it, unless it's just a data dump drive with stuff you can easily replace (Steam Library maybe?).

 

[lexluthermiester]

Amen, bruh... I really feel like I wanna get a SSD for general storage drive since I shuffle files around a lot between drives & I need the speed to do that. But of course I am not dumb enough to do such write intensive task & expect SSD longevity. As it is now though, I am fine with my current speed limitation. But I do wish that changes soon.

That kind of use is what is considered "incidental data storage". That kind of read/write activity will not cause a great deal of wear because you are just not writing to the drive very often, relatively speaking. The kind of read/write operations that will affect an SSD's P/E cycle longevity is an OS writing and erasing temp data to a pagefile every few moments, browsers writing and erasing temp web page storage data and drive arrays that write and erase data on a moment by moment basis.

I too would not accept a used drive with reallocated sectors in SMART that was claimed to be "like new."

That is still not an absolute indicator for the quality of a hard drive.

Then again I'd never honestly buy a used drive, so I may not be the best example.

Fair enough. I'd say you are losing out on some quality storage bargains.

The few that did rated at 2M hours MTBF or equally crazy statistics, just FYI.

Really?! I never saw that. Interesting. They should all still be doing it.

Let's say it lasts 4 years, then crudely speaking one might say the chance of failing per month is around 2%.

If it's a gaming machine, that might be acceptable, but if its a work machine...

Hard drives in a professional environment are often replaced on a 2 to 3 year cycle so that example does really bare out a problem for most companies.

 

[kiriakost]

Its NOT the number of reallocated sectors, it is the CHANGE that counts and is indicating reason for concern.

The best joke in the entire topic.
When there is a technical report, the one appropriate so to evaluate it, this is the one with the necessary training .

I have upload screenshots indicating Reallocated Sectors Count and then the specific serial number HDD was tested with Western Digital utility and got a PASS.
I do believe and trust the Western Digital software.
Everything else this is gossip.

 

[Deleted member 191766]

What really worries me with hard drives is the Nonrecoverable Read Errors per Bits Read, Max of 1 per 10^14; that is just 12.5 TB

 

[kiriakost]

What really worries me with hard drives is the Nonrecoverable Read Errors per Bits Read, Max of 1 per 10^14; that is just 12.5 TB

Send email at Google data-center and ask from their top engineer to offer to you answers, I am just a electrician playing with bulbs.