Hard Disk Monitoring

Hello.

Last month, my computer has freezing problems at start up. It was making a log in in Windows, but I couldn't use any icon-application, since a freezing occurred.

I was told to run Seagate Diagnostic Tool (my hard disk is Seagate), and the disk didn't pass it. 8 errors occurred, the Tool fixed them, and then the disk passed the test.

After this fix, all freezes stopped. But I rarely have some start up problems and need to make a forced shut down and restart.

I ran the HD Sentinel to check the health of my disk and I got this message (Performance 100%, Health 90%):


1010 errors occured during data transfer.
At this point, warranty replacement of the disk is not yet possible, only if the health drops further.
In case of sudden system crash, reboot, blue-screen-of-death, inaccessible file(s)/folder(s), it is recommended to verify data and power cables, connections - and if possible try different cables to prevent further problems.
More information: http://www.hdsentinel.com/hard_disk_cas ... _error.php
It is recommended to examine the log of the disk regularly. All new problems found will be logged there.

No actions needed.

After this, a technician friend of mine told me to take off the HDD and reinstall it, and run Sentinel again, after resetting #199 SMART attribute. But this attribute is already 0. The 1010 errors that are shown in the text report are found in #187 attribute, every time I reboot.

My questions are:

What do you think about my disk? Is it going to fail in the near future? Should I act quickly and order a new disk? How can we interpret these 1010 uncorrectable errors in #187 attribute?

Please help me to follow the proper steps.

Thank you in advance.

Hello,

According the information, I suspect there could be a problem with the cables and/or connections of the hard disk.
Such are frequent cause of communication errors, data transfer errors - and also other problems (for example weak sectors) which result that some applications may refuse to start, the system may be slower / unresponsive or so.

If this happen, yes, we may usually feel that the problem is with the hard disk itself, but the issues are many times not really caused by the hard disk itself, but related to the operating environment.

Hard disk drives may record and show the error count differently. In most cases such communication errors recorded in attribute #199, but yes, on some hard disk drives these are recorded at attribute #187.
It is important to know that these count all problems ever occured during the lifetime of the hard disk, so even after fixing the connections (and/or replacing the cables) the problems are still displayed, they are not automatically cleared.

This is where Hard Disk Sentinel can help: by the offsets column, you can clear the error counter, so then the problems related to the past will be no longer displayed and Hard Disk Sentinel will report only possible new issues. Just we'd need to select the proper attribute to be corrected.

Currently, to investigate the situation, personally I'd do

1) take off the hard disk and re-install it, exactly as your friend suggested it.
If the issues caused by the operating environment (cables, connections), it is better to have it connected again. Personally I'd replace the data cable (as Hard Disk Sentinel suggests) and would avoid power splitters, 4-pin -> SATA power converters (if such devices used) if possible.

2) perform some testing with Hard Disk Sentinel, as described at:
http://www.hdsentinel.com/faq.php#tests
to verify the situation: to reveal any possible further issues (if there are any) or confirm if the hard disk is now stable and there are no new errors.

I would use Disk menu -> Surface test -> Read test, to verify if there are no damaged / bad blocks (no yellow / red blocks).
Also with this test, it is possible to verify if the error counter remains on this level or increases further - indicating that the status is still not stable. If this is true, you may expect further issues in the future.

3) if there are no errors, no new data transfer problems, then you can be sure that the hard disk is stable, safe to use.
And then yes, you can clear the error counter this way:

Open the S.M.A.R.T. page of the hard disk and locate the attribute #187
Then click on the 0 in the Offset column. After a confirmation dialog, you can enter the error count with negative sign:
-1010
to clear the actual number of errors. Then the errors will be no longer displayed (as they related to the previous cables / connections) and Hard Disk Sentinel will no longer displays them, just notifies about possible new issues (if there will be any).