Windows Detected a Hard Disk Problem

[Dariru]

My Acer V7 laptop with a WD Black SSHD WD5000L12X-21UJGT0 has been getting the error "Windows Detected a Hard Disk Problem". I have run Western Digital Data LifeGuard Diagnostics to test the drive. The results given was a pass for the extended test, but a fail for the SMART status due to the Reallocated Sector Count being 139 while the threshold is 140. How concerned should I be about this hard drive?

Note that this laptop is a secondary computer used mainly for school and does not contain any important files that are not backed up onto dropbox and on the main computer.

[Mighty_Miro_WD]

Hi there @Dariru!

 

Reallocated Sector Count in SMART test is quite important as an indicator of bad sectors and a dying drive.

 

Reallocated sector basically means that your hard drive found a bad sector, and swapped it with a 'reserve pool' of sectors. After this swap, the medium should be free of bad sectors to the operating system. It's a technology designed to make failing sectors on the HDD cause no trouble for the operating system because it'll just swap a new one whenever it finds that a particular sector is becoming weak (because it takes more time to read that sector than normal).

 

I would suggest to backup any important data you have there and replace the drive, or if it's still under warranty you can RMA it from here:

 

http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=z32PdV

 

Hope this helps.

 

Cheers!