HDD SMART Status = BAD?

Recently installed speccy and read over all the specs. In the HDD section the SMART status says "BAD".

I've googled and many say that my HD is going bad (and a bunch of other stuff I dont understand :(), yet others say that nothing is wrong and their HD was fine.

- Anyone have this experience before? Did your HD fail?

- What other tools/software can I use to check the status of my HDD?

It might be a glitch in the loading process. If you still see it after restarting, yes, your drive is giving up the ghost. You should have already been backing up your data... right?

But regardless do it now, and get a new drive.

Western Digital has a diagnostic tool called Data Lifeguard Diagnostic, just run that and it will tell you.

The whole point of smart is so that you get a new drive before it ever fails. And yes, the drives I've had with smart errors went on to fail.

It might be a glitch in the loading process. If you still see it after restarting, yes, your drive is giving up the ghost. You should have already been backing up your data... right?

But regardless do it now, and get a new drive.

Kinthalis

Restarted. Speccy still showed BAD status :(.

And yes I have been backing up my data. What would happen to my OS if my HD goes bad? I vaguely remember someone posting that its one OS per HD or something.

Western Digital has a diagnostic tool called Data Lifeguard Diagnostic, just run that and it will tell you.

howlrunner13

Thanks for the suggestion!

I ran DLD and something weird happens. When I first started it up, it gave me a PASS status, but whenever I start it up again it would give me either a PASS or FAIL. I wonder why it does this.

Anyways, my HD just passed the QUICK TEST and I'm running the extended test now. Looking at the test results, it still says SMART TEST FAIL; what does the program test then?

The whole point of smart is so that you get a new drive before it ever fails. And yes, the drives I've had with smart errors went on to fail.

bigfoot2045

Some weird stuff going on with this SMART status. Looks like I will have to get a new HD :(

Windows installs usually link to a motherboard. Even then you can ring up MS and say your HD failed and ask them to renew the key.

Update:

Passed both quick and extended tests. Still have weird event where the program somtimes says PASS and sometimes says FAIL regarding the SMART status. Very confusing, don't know whether to believe in the tests or SMART status.

Windows installs usually link to a motherboard. Even then you can ring up MS and say your HD failed and ask them to renew the key.

Rick_Sure

You can change hard drives as far as I know, but if you change Mobos then you have to get a new key...or call up MS and get them to renew it.ydnarrewop

Ah I see, thanks.

If I were to get a new HD, do I install the OS on the new HD and boot from that HD first?

What do I do with the old HD (remove OS or any other important steps)?

Update:

Passed both quick and extended tests. Still have weird event where the program somtimes says PASS and sometimes says FAIL regarding the SMART status. Very confusing, don't know whether to believe in the tests or SMART status.

[QUOTE="Rick_Sure"]

Windows installs usually link to a motherboard. Even then you can ring up MS and say your HD failed and ask them to renew the key.

arneezy21

You can change hard drives as far as I know, but if you change Mobos then you have to get a new key...or call up MS and get them to renew it.ydnarrewop

Ah I see, thanks.

If I were to get a new HD, do I install the OS on the new HD and boot from that HD first?

What do I do with the old HD (remove OS or any other important steps)?

you can run Seatools to see if you get the same wierdness with the program. (made by seagate, still works on other brand drives).

As for migrating to a new drive, what you can do is get a program like Acronis True Image and do a straight copy from one drive to the other so you dont have to reinstall anything. (obviously needs to be done before drive failure.)

You could do a trial of HD Tune, which will go into specifics about why it fails smart; reallocated sectors and that sort of thing.

http://www.hdtune.com/download.html

you can run Seatools to see if you get the same wierdness with the program. (made by seagate, still works on other brand drives).

As for migrating to a new drive, what you can do is get a program like Acronis True Image and do a straight copy from one drive to the other so you dont have to reinstall anything. (obviously needs to be done before drive failure.)

darksusperia

You could do a trial of HD Tune, which will go into specifics about why it fails smart; reallocated sectors and that sort of thing.

http://www.hdtune.com/download.html

bigfoot2045

Go to the section that says health and see if anything is highlighted in yellow.

Go to the section that says health and see if anything is highlighted in yellow.

bigfoot2045

There is nothing in the health tab. Is it not recognizing my HD?

Heres a pic:

how old is your machine?darksusperia

Only 2 years old lol

is there a bios update for your machine? It could very well just be that with regards to the much larger drives...darksusperia

is there a bios update for your machine? It could very well just be that with regards to the much larger drives...darksusperia

Great suggestion. Checked out my BIOS version and it was on version F6, which was 2 years ago. Lol. There have been five more updates since then (up to F11).

Question:

Can I just run the F11 update and will it include the F7-F10 updates? Or should I update it in order?

It also gives me a warning about flashing the BIOS and sounds pretty scary; should I make a backup of the BIOS or do something to prevent killing the mobo?

Hopefully this would solve the HD problem also.

most times SMART errors really mean what they mean. i had a HDD and i was getting SMART errors like crazy, and it was true that HDD did die after just barley getting my data over the other HDD. start backing up your data, after that event i said i had enough of this crap, i signed up with Carbonite auto back up service, cant never be More happier in my life, the back ups are automatic and never have to worry about anything. so keep an eye on your HDD, start backing up and if you can fork over $50 a year then sign up for carbonite, for your backing up.

most times SMART errors really mean what they mean. i had a HDD and i was getting SMART errors like crazy, and it was true that HDD did die after just barley getting my data over the other HDD. start backing up your data, after that event i said i had enough of this crap, i signed up with Carbonite auto back up service, cant never be More happier in my life, the back ups are automatic and never have to worry about anything. so keep an eye on your HDD, start backing up and if you can fork over $50 a year then sign up for carbonite, for your backing up.

msfan1289

My funds are a bit tight right now so I can't afford the $50 a year, yet alone buying another HDD lol.

I know the best thing would be to backup and get a new HDD, but I'm trying to avoid spending at all costs haha. Plus that HDD program sometimes gives me a passed smart status which gives me hope that everything is okay, but it could just be trolling me.

[QUOTE="msfan1289"]

most times SMART errors really mean what they mean. i had a HDD and i was getting SMART errors like crazy, and it was true that HDD did die after just barley getting my data over the other HDD. start backing up your data, after that event i said i had enough of this crap, i signed up with Carbonite auto back up service, cant never be More happier in my life, the back ups are automatic and never have to worry about anything. so keep an eye on your HDD, start backing up and if you can fork over $50 a year then sign up for carbonite, for your backing up.

arneezy21

My funds are a bit tight right now so I can't afford the $50 a year, yet alone buying another HDD lol.

I know the best thing would be to backup and get a new HDD, but I'm trying to avoid spending at all costs haha. Plus that HDD program sometimes gives me a passed smart status which gives me hope that everything is okay, but it could just be trolling me.

its like when your PC tells you that the temps of a hardware in your PC is over 128*C then you know its a glitch or trolling you lol

[QUOTE="arneezy21"][QUOTE="msfan1289"]

most times SMART errors really mean what they mean. i had a HDD and i was getting SMART errors like crazy, and it was true that HDD did die after just barley getting my data over the other HDD. start backing up your data, after that event i said i had enough of this crap, i signed up with Carbonite auto back up service, cant never be More happier in my life, the back ups are automatic and never have to worry about anything. so keep an eye on your HDD, start backing up and if you can fork over $50 a year then sign up for carbonite, for your backing up.

msfan1289

My funds are a bit tight right now so I can't afford the $50 a year, yet alone buying another HDD lol.

I know the best thing would be to backup and get a new HDD, but I'm trying to avoid spending at all costs haha. Plus that HDD program sometimes gives me a passed smart status which gives me hope that everything is okay, but it could just be trolling me.

its like when your PC tells you that the temps of a hardware in your PC is over 128*C then you know its a glitch or trolling you lol

Lol yep

[QUOTE="arneezy21"][QUOTE="msfan1289"]

most times SMART errors really mean what they mean. i had a HDD and i was getting SMART errors like crazy, and it was true that HDD did die after just barley getting my data over the other HDD. start backing up your data, after that event i said i had enough of this crap, i signed up with Carbonite auto back up service, cant never be More happier in my life, the back ups are automatic and never have to worry about anything. so keep an eye on your HDD, start backing up and if you can fork over $50 a year then sign up for carbonite, for your backing up.

msfan1289

My funds are a bit tight right now so I can't afford the $50 a year, yet alone buying another HDD lol.

I know the best thing would be to backup and get a new HDD, but I'm trying to avoid spending at all costs haha. Plus that HDD program sometimes gives me a passed smart status which gives me hope that everything is okay, but it could just be trolling me.

its like when your PC tells you that the temps of a hardware in your PC is over 128*C then you know its a glitch or trolling you lol

Seagate and Western Digital are generally pretty good about replacing defective drives within the warranty period free of charge except for maybe shipping. Even if you're a cheap bastard, there's really no reason to continue using a defective drive that's throwing up SMART errors.

For instance I had a 1.5TB Seagate 7200.11 drive that started throwing up SMART errors and then died a few days later. Not only did they replace it for free, but they gave me one of their newer Barricuda Green drives that's SATA 6.0Gb/s with a 64M cache, and that has much higher transfer speeds when I benchmark it. So not only did they replace it, they gave me a better drive.

if you go here and scroll to the @BIOS utility Make sure you disable your AV and hyper threading in the BIOS if your using it before you use the utility (from gigabytes @bios support notes). You could also try updating the mobo drivers first and see if that helps. (uninstall olds ones, then install new ones). Use @BIOS to flash your mobo.darksusperia

I have updated the MOBO to latest version and got a "CMOS checksum error - defaults loaded" message. Was scared for a bit but started up fine and is now updated.

Well everything seems faster, loading times and startup! Thanks :)

Speccy still shows BAD smart status :(

Data Lifeguard Diagonistic still gives PASS/FAIL status, but 8 out of 10 tries got me a pass status. Lol.

The drivers on that website don't seem like they'll resolve my HD problem. Should I still update them anyways? I'm unsure of how to uninstall the drivers. I googled and went through the 'device manager' and couldn't find which ones to uninstall.

Anyways, looks like I'll have to buy a new HDD. Though I'm pretty confident in my little WD hard drive will last me a few more years :P

Thanks for everyones help!

Seagate and Western Digital are generally pretty good about replacing defective drives within the warranty period free of charge except for maybe shipping. Even if you're a cheap bastard, there's really no reason to continue using a defective drive that's throwing up SMART errors.

For instance I had a 1.5TB Seagate 7200.11 drive that started throwing up SMART errors and then died a few days later. Not only did they replace it for free, but they gave me one of their newer Barricuda Green drives that's SATA 6.0Gb/s with a 64M cache, and that has much higher transfer speeds when I benchmark it. So not only did they replace it, they gave me a better drive.

bigfoot2045

Oh cool. I'll have to read up if I still have warranty on my HD. Hopefully they'll do the same for me!

Only thing that sucks is that I'd have to wait for the replacement before I can use my PC again. Lol. But thanks, I'll check it out.

Edit: My warranty status is "out of sub region". Lol I ordered from newegg.ca and it shipped from US to Canada. Actually I think I'm still eligible for warranty because I'm an end user. Awesome!

couldnt tell what drivers you listed to but I had a quick look and I dont think theres anything there to resolve your situation. By chance, have you tried changing the sata cable?darksusperia

I have not changed the SATA cable. I don't even have an extra one lying around. I took a peek and the HD area is pretty dusty, I'll give it a cleaning lol.

Burn boot run HDD test.

https://www.idrive.com/idrivee/sh?k=aequ845278

If it fails anything then yes your HDD is dying. Keep in mind warranty for HDD is different when you buy them with a unit and without a unit.