Question I have a question regarding my hard drive’s health state.

[Mamo Kemo]

Hello everyone, and thanks in advance!
I installed CrystalDiskInfo tool to assess the health of my HDD, and it said: “caution [C5] current pending sector count : 88”

The values regarding current pending sector count were:

• current = 100
• worst = 100
• threshold = 0
• raw value = 000000000058

What do those numbers mean? And should I be worried? It’s worth noting that this is the main HDD of my laptop.

 

[Dragos Manea]

Yes, you should worry, there are 88 sectors (according to your hexa code) that are not usable. The performance of the disk is greatly affected also you cannot rely on it anymore, it can fail anytime. Make a back-up of anything important on it and try to get a new one.

 

[Mamo Kemo]

Yes, you should worry, there are 88 sectors (according to your hexa code) that are not usable. The performance of the disk is greatly affected also you cannot rely on it anymore, it can fail anytime. Make a back-up of anything important on it and try to get a new one.

Thank you. I will be replacing the HDD asap!

 

[popatim]

Pending Sectors are not failed sectors... they are merely sectors that the drive wants to retest to see if they are good or bad. If they fail then they get marked bad.

bad sectors are Reallocated or Uncorrectible sectors.

i wouldn't be replacing the drive just yet. Pending could just be that you had the music up to loud and the drive was being affected by the beat. Ie - having a harder time reading.

 

[Kvlt Doom]

Anytime a third-party program, such as Crystal Disk (or any other S.M.A.R.T. test for that matter) warns of impending failure, it's a good idea to backup at the very least. Just in case. Also, take what those programs report with a grain of salt, and verify if doom truly is impending. It's easy enough:

*If your drive manufacturer has their own "testing" program available, download & run it. I had CrystalDisk show odd info & upon running the WD software, found nothing was wrong with the drive, which was confirmed upon running check disk at boot.

*Run a check disk at the next boot. To schedule:
Right click on the hard disk in Windows Explorer.
Select Properties.
Go to the Tools tab.
It's the first entry, Error Checking, click Check Disk.
Tick (check) the boxe Automatically fix file system errors.

It will run the test at the next boot because it can't run the test while the disk is in use.
Note: If you want to perform a detailed test of the hard drive, you can select the Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors check box. You should do that in the justified suspicion of existing hardware error in any case. But please note that the operation can then take a long time. For a first routine check, we recommend that you do not select this option.

You could run a Check Disk within Windows by not checking either box, but I would only recommend doing that if the drive manufacturer's software doesn't indicate there is a problem.

 

[Satan-IR]

As said, pending sectors might be bad or not and not reason enough to write the drive off. I would use HD Sentinel too to check the SMART status.

If you use HD Sentinel and go to SMART tab you can right click in the SMART frame/panel and click 'Decimal data fields' so that hex numbers change into 'human' numbers.

Anyway backup any important data you might have on this drive. Also IF the drive is on a path to impending failure stressing it further for the purpose of further scanning or fixing might make things worse.

Not saying it is, and not saying it would definitely fail if you do test it. IF and MIGHT are the conjunction and verb I'm using.

Hope your drive is OK and would keep on going.

 

[ElectrO_90]

If you want to know what anything means about your hard disk
Download and install Hard Disk Sentinel - in English it explains what is going on with your hard disk plus it has all the technical details available as well
It also monitors your HDD 24/7 so you will know if there is an error or something major is about to happen to your Drives
So much easier than Crystal