Something strange happened to my hard drive

[osak4x]

Around 2-3 months ago I discovered my primary HDD (WD-1002FEAX-00Z3A0, it's a western digital) had 1 write error count. I kept checking everyday (I'm serious) if the value was increasing but it didn't until today.

(I did a chkdsk right after I discovered the write error count. Here is the log: http://pastebin.com/3t4yQshw)

Today I checked the value as always but to my surprise, the value is 0 (it decreased from 1). I don't understand. Is the HDD going to fail sooner? If not, what happened to that write error count? I'm so confused.

Any help is appreciated. Thanks...


SMART:

[NumLock21]

Run WD diagnostic

[osak4x]

Run WD diagnostic

 

I did a quick test and it passed. I'm gonna do an extended one. But for now these are the screenshots... I don't know how to read the SMART values WD is showing me though.

 

Edit: When I hover over the value, it says: Attribute falling below threshold indicates a negative health status. And worst: Worst attribute value ever occurred.

 

So I guess, the write error count never ocurred? I also used Crystal Disk Info and in raw value (write error count) it had "00000000001".

 

SMART:

 

Results:

[handruin]

It could just be a fluke.  Do you have a UPS?  Maybe you had a power surge/sag causing some oddities.  The first screen capture shows no reallocated sectors or really anything to be concerned about.  As always I would strongly suggest proper backups and then just sleep easy at night.  Consider all drives as time-bombs.  It's a matter of when they're going to die, not if...

 

You may also want to read this interesting blog post from BackBlaze.  They have ample sample rates from the various drive manufacturers.  Here they a nice writeup on Hard drive SMART stats and predicting failure rates.

 

 

This is their TL;DR:

 

From experience, we have found the following 5 SMART metrics indicate impending disk drive failure:

• SMART 5 – Reallocated_Sector_Count.
• SMART 187 – Reported_Uncorrectable_Errors.
• SMART 188 – Command_Timeout.
• SMART 197 – Current_Pending_Sector_Count.
• SMART 198 – Offline_Uncorrectable.

[osak4x]

 

It could just be a fluke.  Do you have a UPS?  Maybe you had a power surge/sag causing some oddities.  The first screen capture shows no reallocated sectors or really anything to be concerned about.  As always I would strongly suggest proper backups and then just sleep easy at night.  Consider all drives as time-bombs.  It's a matter of when they're going to die, not if...

 

You may also want to read this interesting blog post from BackBlaze.  They have ampe sample rates from the various drive manufacturers.  Here they a nice writeup on Hard drive SMART stats and predicting failure rates.

 

 

This is their TL;DR:

 

From experience, we have found the following 5 SMART metrics indicate impending disk drive failure:

• SMART 5 – Reallocated_Sector_Count.
• SMART 187 – Reported_Uncorrectable_Errors.
• SMART 188 – Command_Timeout.
• SMART 197 – Current_Pending_Sector_Count.
• SMART 198 – Offline_Uncorrectable.

 

 

Yes. I have 1 UPS exclusively for the PC. Thanks for the link. It's really good.

 

The extended test has just finished. I couldn't find the log but in test result it says: PASS and I checked the SMART attributes again and they are the same.

[Mighty_Miro_WD]

Hi there.

 

Since the WD Data Lifeguard Diagnostics tool doesn't detect any errors and both quick and extended tests are passed, you don't need to worry and keep using the drive. 

 

Cheers!