Pending Sectors on a new drive?

[brandon3055]

Hello!

I just received 2 new WD Blue 3TB drives which i will be using to upgrade my storage server. I have been putting them through their paces to ensure nether of them have any DOA issues and i am a little concerned about one of them.

I have been testing them using my Ubuntu system because it was the most convenient option.
The first problem i encountered was when creating the initial partitions using the graphical disk management program that comes with ubuntu. When i partitioned the drive in question instead of creating a single partition it created 2 separate partitions around 900GB and left 2 blocks of un-allocated space. In order to correct this i had to delete the partitions and re write the partition table using fdisk. After that i was able to create the partition using the graphical software.
(That issue may just be due to my inexperience with linux but i thought i should include it in case it has something todo with my SMART issue)

I started loading the drives by filling them with the current contents of my storage server but decided to switch to something a little better suited for the job so i switched to a badblocks script.

The drive in question is currently 13 hours into the first badblocks run and is already showing 225 read errors which showed up around 10 hours in. It now also shows 57 pending sectors in SMART.

Here are the before and after smart results:
Before i started badblocks: http://ss.brandon3055.com/54q332x.txt
During badblocks after errors occured: http://ss.brandon3055.com/g4qqr5g.txt

So... Is this something i should be concerned about?

The other drive which i am testing simultaneously isn't showing any issues at all.

 

[CountMike]

Since you were using Linux, you could use G-Parted that's included in most distros. Yes, pending sectors are of concern and shouldn't happen to any new HDD.

 

[brandon3055]

Yea a friend of mine suggested G-Parted so i will be using that in the future.
Just an update on the drive. Its currently 24 hours into the badblocks run. At some point during the second write pass the pending sectors count dropped to 0 then during the second read pass it threw 3 more read errors and 1 new pending sector. Thats a lot less than the 225 on the first pass but i suspect thats because the drive is remapping those sectors. If thats the case then the fact that there is now a new? pending sector is probably a bad sign.
The reallocated sector count is still 0.

 

[CountMike]

Those things can also happen when there's a bad cable connection or unusual shut off while writing. Those are "soft" errors that could be rectified but might stay in SMART forever.

 

[brandon3055]

I guess thats not impossible. I do just have the drives sitting next to the open case. Once this test is complete i may run it again with them installed in the case and some different cables.

 

[CountMike]

If you have windows there's many more tools available.

 

[brandon3055]

So just to give you an update i ended up actually installing both drives in the test system (i previously had them sitting on the desk next to it) i also replaces the cable on the drive showing the errors. I re ran all of the tests including the SMART self tests and there have so far been no more errors and the drive isn't showing any reallocated sectors. So fingers crossed it may have just been a combination of a bad cable and the drive getting bumped around on the desk.

 

[CountMike]

Tnx for update, good luck.