[SOLVED] Increasing UltraDMA (UDMA) CRC Error Count

[fitzy_rs]

Hi team,

I've been running a Toshiba MQ01ABD100 1TB HDD in our Inspiron R 5537 from factory since 2014. Approx. 2016 a completely fresh install of Win10 Home was made. I wouldn't be able to graph the progression, but currently, the laptop takes minutes to load all the background processes and whatever else it needs to do when starting windows before it's useable - the kind of boot where you turn it on and go get a cup of something. I assumed this was a bloated OS over time. I've moved this HDD to a ODD Caddy, and placed a SATA SSD with fresh Win10 Home install in the main location.

Running the SMART analysis the main thing I've noticed is a continually increasing C7 UltraDMA CRC Error Count and C8 Write Error Rate for the Toshiba HDD.

It does this:

1. Whether I've booted into the old HDD OS (in ODD Caddy) or the fresh SSD OS (In main slot)
2. If I've removed the SSD from the laptop, and moved the HDD back into the main slot and run it alone
3. Attached the HDD to a second PC via USB enclosure - albeit this didn't seem to go up by itself, but more if I generated activity such as open a file, refresh on SMART assessment etc.

Other drives attached to the same ports don't seem to do this. A long SMART test doesn't throw errors.

Main questions:

1. Does this indicate a problem with the drive itself?
2. What is the risk of the data that has been transferring to other drives under this condition being corrupted in the target location?

Screenshots of the smart results is below.
Smart Results-1
SMART Results-2

Thank you in advance!

 

[rgd1101]

1)yes
2)don't know unless you test them

 

[fitzy_rs]

1)yes
2)don't know unless you test them

Thanks for the quick reply rgd1101,

There's probably a question I've skipped over - are the possible causes of this symptom likely to have risked corruption of some data currently on the HDD, or is it more related to the communication to and from? Thinking: reaching for my slightly out of date backups vs. copying as is and verifying.

What would you recommend it's the best way to test - checksum comparer?

 

[rgd1101]

corruption of some data currently on the HDD

usually once the hdd start failing, it will grow

should have start data backup all the time, not when it start failing. but it still better than not backing up.

checksum for? unless you are assuming the hdd data is to corrupted

 

[fzabkar]

A "long SMART test" is executed wholly within the drive. No data are transferred over the SATA interface. Therefore the test would not be expected to affect the UltraDMA CRC Error Count. Also, these SMART tests do not write to the data area, so one would expect that the Write Error Rate would also be unaffected.

One test you could try, after backing up your data, would be a secure erase. This writes a fixed data pattern to every sector (usually zeros) and it is executed wholly within the drive. Assuming that any errors would be logged by SMART, this would tell you whether there was a genuine write problem.