HDD Reallocated Sector Count

[Digiface]

Hi.

In one my hard drive there's Reallocated Sector Count "Raw value" 13. It's raised from 2 to 13 about in 4 months. I buyed that drive 11/28/2005. That drive is Seagate Barracuda 80Gt. It's Slave drive and only contains video files.

Should i be worried about that drive?

[Bond007]

That depends upon the threshold set by seagate for that drive (your s.m.a.r.t software should tell you what it is), if its far below that then you dont really have to worry too much yet, but if it does keep increasing and gets close to the threshold value set on the drive you should replace it as the drive is failing. After it exceeds the threshold value you should start seeing bad blocks appear on the drive.

hope that helps

[Digiface]

Count is now 34 and threshold is 36. I'm thinking to wear off that hard drive.

[CWR03]

Check out this thread (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=122338) and its links which contain some interesting data about hard drive life. 80 GB is small, and drives are cheap - I'd replace it. Seagate now has a standard 5 year warranty.

[Digiface]

I was thinking to buy another SATA drive. Does having slave drive slow down master drive, like i now have? And about warranty; when i can take advantage of warranty? Can i already do that?

EDIT: I checked with Seagate 'Warranty Validation' and it said that my drive is "Out of Warranty"...

[CWR03]

I was thinking to buy another SATA drive. Does having slave drive slow down master drive, like i now have?
SATA drives such as a Western Digital Raptor are built on a SCSI drive and are faster than their less expensive brothers which are built on normal EIDE drives. The former type are primarily used in pairs in a RAID configuration to load commonly-used programs faster. The latter are better for cheap storage.

Having two EIDE drives on the same cable will slow them both down only when you're transferring data between those two drives since it has to read a little from one drive then write it to the other, rather than reading and writing simultaneously.

[Digiface]

Threshold 36 is now exceeded (37), but status is still "OK". When it's not OK?

[CWR03]

I would already have replaced it. It's clearly getting worse, and will continue to do so until it fails catastrophically, at which point you'll lose everything on it.

[Digiface]

I have already backed up what i want. What is proper way to wear off hard drive? Can i just take it away from case or do i have to do something in Windows first?

[foxyshadis]

http://www.heidi.ie/eraser/ <-- secure erasure
http://stuff.ubersite.com/1128308991445714418/1/destroyed_hd.jpg <-- must faster secure erasure

Just opening it up will frustrate all but the most dedicated of theives, though. The first one has the benefit that while running, your SMART counts are likely to keep rising and possibly start causing unrecoverable failures immediately, proving that it was time anyway. Could take most of a day to finish though.

[Digiface]

Can i just take drive off with all data on it? There's just some video files.

[foxyshadis]

If it's external, you can unplug it anytime. If it's internal you should shut it off first. (You're not supposed to hotswap but it often works anyway.) Either way windows won't care and the drive will be fine.

[Digiface]

EDIT: I checked with Seagate 'Warranty Validation' and it said that my drive is "Out of Warranty"...

I checked wrong drive. That slave drive still got warranty left. But i was thinking to buy SATA drive for replace.

Can i use warranty, even drive is not yet broken? Or do i have to wait until it completely fails? Well, i think i wear off that drive until it fails, skipping warranty, and buy that SATA drive. :)