[SOLVED] My SEAGATE EXTERNAL HDD 1.5TB suddenly has 1300+ reallocated sector counts after only 1 month of usage.

CardinalSin

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Oct 16, 2020
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CrystalDiskInfo of the disk - https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZYZ6-QXCeCARBvpipEufD3d0OsiEuScs/view?usp=sharing

Yesterday, i was moving some files to the EHDD, the transfer speed plummeted down to 0, and the drive got disconnected abruptly. The EHDD lights were still on and you could here it spinning but it just won't show up anywhere(tried checking in device manager, disk management). So i disconnected the USB and reconnected it again, it shows up, checked the SMART info, it had around 137 reallocated sectors.

Just a couple days back, it had 0, and the drive status was shown as good. I tried moving files from the EHDD onto my Laptop's SSD and it got disconnected again. Reconnected it again and the reallocated sector count was as shown in the attached image.

The disk only has 29 power on hours. It has never suffered any physical damage after i got my hands on it(dunno if it was abused during shipping but the EHDD looked fine and SMART was good too). Is my E.drive going to fail? I have around 450 GBs of data on it and i plan on moving it to another EHDD.
 
Solution
I understand, and i'm prepared for the worst. But is it common for a drive to have so many reallocated sectors after a single month. I have a 3 year old WD EHDD 1TB, which has no reallocated sectors, it is almost full and has around 350 power-on hours but still works like a charm.
Just as any other electronics, they die.
Some of them quite early. Others last for years and years.

CardinalSin

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Oct 16, 2020
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Be prepared for imminent failure. Your drive is very sick.
I understand, and i'm prepared for the worst. But is it common for a drive to have so many reallocated sectors after a single month. I have a 3 year old WD EHDD 1TB, which has no reallocated sectors, it is almost full and has around 350 power-on hours but still works like a charm.
 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
I understand, and i'm prepared for the worst. But is it common for a drive to have so many reallocated sectors after a single month. I have a 3 year old WD EHDD 1TB, which has no reallocated sectors, it is almost full and has around 350 power-on hours but still works like a charm.
Just as any other electronics, they die.
Some of them quite early. Others last for years and years.
 
Solution

backonshore

Distinguished
Aug 19, 2008
31
2
18,535
I think this is why it's always suggested to run a 24 hour burn in test on any drive before using it. If it's gonna die, it'll die during the test. If it doesn't, it'll run for a while.

After taking on this practice, I've been soooo much happier.