S.M.A.R.T tested hard drive, is this result really bad?

[misspainter93]

I have recently had trouble with my laptop so factory resetted it but still was very slow and unstable so factory reset it again with no change. I ran a S.M.A.R.T test on the hard drive as i read on google my problem may be how old my hard drive is (going on 5/6 years). The result was caution and was wondering if anyone could tell me how bad this result actually is? and any advice?

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=342841059254432&l=e19e05c54b

thanks in advance

 

[kanewolf]

Without a screenshot of the SMART data nobody can give you an answer. 5 years of USE is when, on average, disk drives begin to fail at a faster rate. BUT, for an individual disk it isn't a predictor.

 

[norsestar]

What exactly did the test say?

A hard drive that's starting to fail will indeed cause slowdowns as the drive tries repeatedly to read or write bad sectors. You may be able to put off the inevitable for a while by having the drive spare out the bad sectors, but once they start failing more will follow. This may be a good excuse to switch over to an SSD.

 

[misspainter93]

sorry forgot to add a picture of the test, it should be on there now

 

[norsestar]

The Pending Sectors count indicates the drive has 3 sectors with uncorrectable errors. If you care about what's on the drive you should back it up now while you still can.

You can try running the long self-test and let it fix the errors (mark those sectors as unuseable and map in replacements). I've had mixed results with this: of the two drives I've "fixed" this way, one is still okay after 2+ years and the other immediately developed hundreds more bad sectors.

To be safe, the answer is going to be to replace the drive. The SMART data shows 21765 power-on hours or nearly 2.5 years spinning or about 7 billion rotations. I'd say you've gotten your money's worth out of it.