Is my hard drive starting to fail early?

[Vasllo]

I have a Seagate Barracuda 2TB (ST2000DM006-2DM164) that I bought open box (brand new, zero use) about 3 years ago, it has been turned on 1987 times and has 15,448 hours of usage.

 

Yesterday, while downloading a game, I received an error message from Argus Monitor that my HD had 8 pending sectors, which are also uncorrectable. No biggie, I thought, until I tried to download the remaining files that got corrupted only to receive the same message, now at 16 sectors. I gave up and deleted the game. Today, I ran chkdsk /r on the drive, and after about 3~4h running, I receive the same goddamn message again, now to find that the chkdsk did not reallocate any sectors, and it's now at 24 sectors. The drive has not fallen down or anything, and it has been about a month since I took the PC apart to clean it, and now out of the blue, my HD keeps increasing the bad sectors count nonstop, and failing to fix them.

 

Maybe the reading head is bent or something and is screwing the plate every time it tries to read that area? What can this be, and what could be done? My HD is not old enough to be having these kinds of issues. It would be the second early death of an HD out of the four I've used, jeez...

 

[BondiBlue]

Go ahead and replace it. Based on what you've posted I'd also recommend backing it up sooner rather than later. Reallocated sectors usually aren't a problem as long as they don't grow in number. Your drive isn't new anymore, and failures happen over time. 

 

I've got a couple drives still in active use with reallocated sectors. One of the 2TB drives in my NAS has 2 reallocated sectors, but that number hasn't grown, so I feel comfortable using it. However, if the number starts to grow I'll be swapping it out without thinking about it. Your drive has a growing number of reallocated sectors, so it's time for it to go. 

[Blue4130]

55 minutes ago, Vasllo said:

. It would be the second early death of an HD out of the four I've used, jeez...

 

 

You've had it for three years. Warranty is only two years. I wouldn't call it an early death. 

[Vasllo]

15 minutes ago, Blue4130 said:

You've had it for three years. Warranty is only two years. I wouldn't call it an early death. 

Well, considering I often see drives running with several times the usage on mine, I would, but I guess I'm not lucky with HDs.

1 hour ago, BondiBlue said:

Go ahead and replace it. Based on what you've posted I'd also recommend backing it up sooner rather than later. Reallocated sectors usually aren't a problem as long as they don't grow in number. Your drive isn't new anymore, and failures happen over time. 

 

I've got a couple drives still in active use with reallocated sectors. One of the 2TB drives in my NAS has 2 reallocated sectors, but that number hasn't grown, so I feel comfortable using it. However, if the number starts to grow I'll be swapping it out without thinking about it. Your drive has a growing number of reallocated sectors, so it's time for it to go. 

Well, I don't have many important files there, I'll see what I can do and keep an eye on it, and on a new drive to buy...

[BondiBlue]

13 minutes ago, Vasllo said:

Well, considering I often see drives running with several times the usage on mine, I would, but I guess I'm not lucky with HDs.

Hard drives are mechanical devices, so there's always a chance of failure at any time. I've had drives with less than 1,000 hours begin to fail, and I've got drives with more than 100,000 that are still fine.