S.M.A.R.T Error: Bad Drive

[Gavisann]

This morning I turned on my computer and I noticed it was sitting at the bios splash screen for a while so I pressed del to see what was up. It told me that there was a S.M.A.R.T error on one of my drives and that I should replace it soon. My drive is the 1 TB 7200.12 from SeaGate btw.

When I got into Windows my drive wasn't there. I tried relogging a few times to no avail. I then went into my bios and disabled S.M.A.R.T for that drive and when I loaded windows the drive was there. I ran HD Tune and was told this.

HD Tune: ST31000528AS Health

ID                               Current  Worst    ThresholdData        Status   
(01) Raw Read Error Rate         118      72       6        168983571   Ok       
(03) Spin Up Time                95       94       0        0           Ok       
(04) Start/Stop Count            99       99       20       1094        Ok       
(05) Reallocated Sector Count    31       31       36       2829        Failed   
(07) Seek Error Rate             64       60       30       3086240     Ok       
(09) Power On Hours Count        100      100      0        840         Ok       
(0A) Spin Retry Count            100      100      97       0           Ok       
(0C) Power Cycle Count           100      100      20       284         Ok       
(B7) (unknown attribute)         100      100      0        0           Ok       
(B8) (unknown attribute)         100      100      99       0           Ok       
(BB) (unknown attribute)         1        1        0        2063        Ok       
(BC) (unknown attribute)         99       48       0        74253422    Ok       
(BD) (unknown attribute)         99       99       0        1           Ok       
(BE) Airflow Temperature         68       51       45       538837024   Ok       
(C2) Temperature                 32       49       0        32          Ok       
(C3) Hardware ECC Recovered      52       25       0        168983571   Ok       
(C5) Current Pending Sector      72       60       0        1186        Ok       
(C6) Offline Uncorrectable       72       60       0        1186        Ok       
(C7) Ultra DMA CRC Error Count   200      200      0        0           Ok       
(F0) Head Flying Hours           100      253      0        1917        Ok       
(F1) (unknown attribute)         100      253      0        -988211832  Ok       
(F2) (unknown attribute)         100      253      0        78324347    Ok       

Power On Time         : 840
Health Status         : Failed

So I have bad sectors ok. I am not above the threshold so am I safe or should I RMA the drive? Any help would be appreciated.

 

[mikedt]

If you have any doubt and the drive is under warranty, RMA it stating that it's failing SMART for excessive bad sectors. You have nothing to lose.

BTW I have a much travelled 2 year old netbook, and it's HDD is failing SMART for excessive bad sectors ('Reallocated Sector Count'), which is 109 and the SMART threshold is 30. It's not got any worse in use, and it's not under warranty. So I'm just going to use it until it dies, or the bad sector count starts rising noticeably. I check it weekly.Needless to say, I always do frequent backups, which is what one should be doing anyway regardless.

I sometimes tend to think of SMART as been like the HAL computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Where HAL predicted an antenna part failure, but in reality the crew couldn't find anything wrong with the part. So they just put it back into service to see if it fails, and it didn't. Rather like SMART and the HDD in my netbook.

 

[Gavisann]

I'll have to make sure it is under warranty. I don't think I registered it when I bought it. My concern is when I turn S.M.A.R.T on I can't see the drive in windows. If i leave S.M.A.R.T off will HD Tune still tell me the proper amount of sectors?