Hard Disk Monitoring

Hello.

From what I read after googling this, it appears to be a well known issue with this SSD model. It's only a visual bug and it does not affect disk's health.

Here's a screenshot form one of those SSD's, the older one that I think has maybe 2 years(I don't really remember), but I scrolled down to the very beginning of the log and this has been going like this to this day. It's not an issue for as long as it goes between 1-0.





Now the problem lies with the new one, that I bought roughly 2 months ago, which I mentioned in my old thread https://www.hdsentinel.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=14584




It started in this month with the usual 1-0, but in the middle of the log at it goes 1->4 instead of 0. I remember that was the day I noticed it, because my PC took slightly longer to boot than usual(from the windows boot screen). Once it did, I checked Hard Disk Sentinel and noticed health drop to 98% of that new SSD because this time it went 1->4. It did correct itself later on and it just keeps going just like the old one, but ever since now it is often going between different numbers and not just 1-0. The disk itself is also behaving strangely. For example I have a folder of let's say 100 photo's on this new MX500, old MX500 and on HDD. On both old MX500 and HDD, when I open 1 photo with default windows image viewer and then just quickly press right arrow button on my keyboard, both disk's will be displaying new photo as fast as I am clicking this button. This new MX500 sometimes does it too for a while, and sometimes it just slow down like I'm still quickly mashing right arrow button yet new photos are being displayed with like 0.5 seconds delay in between, like it's some old HDD that you could hear spinning in the background trying to keep up. It also seems like it sometimes trying to "recover" from those Current Pending Secotr? Basically there's like only 1 program that I launch from that new SSD and I remember that day when it first went 1->4 it took a bit longer to open the folder with that software. Basically instead of opening instantly there was that loading bar on top of the explorer for like 2-3 seconds and the thumbail for that program's executable was also gone and replaced with default exe's thumbail. It did correct it after I launched it.

I don't know if this could be indicator for some serious issue, because it still goes back to 0 eventually and health to 100%, however I have this SSD for only 2 months so I am not sure if I should return it. The only difference I noticed is that the old one has a old firmware while new one has I think the latest - .

I read up about Current Pending Sector over those few days and what I got is that unless Reallocated Sector Count rises each time too, then in theory it's nothing to worry about. Of course it depends also on how many Pending Sectors are appearing over time. If Pending Sector goes back to 0, it means it had been rewritten correctly, but if sector cannot be written to, the drives replaces it with a reserve sector and that raises Reallocated Sector Count which every disk has a limit of.

Something new occured recently when I did a quick health scan in HDTune of that disk and since that scan actually forced to use a whole disk instead of just small part of. I mean as I said before, I use that SSD to just launch 1 software/game and the rest of it is storage, so it's barely used over the course of day and when it's actually used I just navigate to that software, launch it and that's it. This is probably why Current Pending Sector only goes between 1-0 or some other small numbers. When I used quick health scan in HDTune, the scan froze for like 3 seconds and then resumed and finished. No errors were found, but Current Pending Sector raised to 48


It was raised a bit more after 3 minutes to a max of 54, and then started to go down 1 by 1 every few minutes. I managed to speed it up, so that it went down by more than 1 a few times, by just forcing to rewrite damaged sectors quicker by just using that disk by opening every folder of it, every file etc. and it did work because I remember finding few that took a bit longer to open and when I checked the log, Pending Sector was lowered by more than 1 a few times as you can see on that image. Health dropped to 68% in that moment and perhaps it could drop even more if instead of quick scan I did a full scan which perhaps would reveal even more errors. They all get rewritten correctly however and health is back to 100% and it just goes between 1-0 again.

Now I'm just thinking what to do next, because theoretically I could probably use this SSD the way I am using it right now, launching only 1 software/game off of it and to copy some files from time to time meaning only small part of it would be in use, which should keep Current Pending Sector small as only the very same files would be in use. I could probably use it like this for a next few years without problems, assuming Current Pending Sector raises only to a small numbers and then always gets rewritten correctly without ever raising Reallocated Sector Count.

On the other hand, this is a fairly new SSD bought 2 months ago with a 5 years warranty and HDTune scan revealed that there are problems in much bigger surface, rather than just that 1 folder containing 1 software that I use. Then again all those Pending Sectors got rewritten correctly and Reallocated Count is still 0 so I am not really sure what to do with it.


There's one more matter, because if I understood correctly, once Pending Sector occurs then it should get fixed by either geting rewritten correctly and if it can't because it's damaged, then it gets reallocated with a spare block. In my case it is the former that's happening, but those sectors aren't actually being fixed, it's like those are in a constant loop :


When I don't use that SSD over the day, nothing happens, but when I do, some blocks are constantly failing, then it gets fixed and they fail again shortly after as you can see. I read that it's possible to force a reallocation with some softwares and this would probably fix it for good, as it would replace that bugged blocks that are in some loop of some sort with new working ones although it might be complicated. Then again it shouldn't even be needed, becaues if it was, it would be done automatically by disk itself and Reallocated Count would raise. Yet it's not needed because those sectors can be read up correctly on the next time so Pending Count goes down, but then why do they fail again shortly after.

I don't know what I should do, return it and get new one, try to force reallocation, or leave it as is is and just keep watch for Current Count if it is not growing too big and if it keeps getting fixed automatically.

> I read up about Current Pending Sector over those few days and what I got is that unless
> Reallocated Sector Count rises each time too, then in theory it's nothing to worry about.

Yes, in theory.

But in real life the pending sector is (at least) annoying: it causes slower operation, freezes (as you can see) and the data in the affected sector may damage. So in real life the pending sector can cause data corruption, even data loss - and should not be ignored.

Yes, usually these can be fixed relatively easily - and sometimes fixed automatically with time, when the drive performs re-check and/or reallocation (if required) but the pending sector is a good indication that there is something not correct in the operating environment.

Usually these pending sectors are NOT related to the disk drive itself, but caused by something else:
- improper cables, connections
- bad power source (frequently caused by power cable adapters/splitters, 4-pin -> SATA power adapters or even modular PSUs)
- overclocking
- bad drivers

This is explained with lots of details at Support -> Frequently Asked Questions -> What is a weak sector? How to repair weak sectors?
https://www.hdsentinel.com/hard_disk_case_weak_sectors.php

This page clearly describes what to do: try to perform the disk testing. Not with xy tools but with the Disk menu -> Surface test functions of Hard Disk Sentinel as this reveals and fixes / stabilizes the sectors and sensitive enough to report issues in a controlled way.
But first you'd need to check everything above mentioned to ensure that the operating environment should be stable - otherwise any testing (or just normal use) will surely reveal more and more problems and the current pending sector count increases (as you can see).


> I don't know what I should do, return it and get new one,

If you do that and the SSD is perfect but the operating environment is not stable, then you'll experience 100% same with a new drive too.
So you'd need to check cables, connections, power cable, power supply. Try to avoid overclocking and update chipset driver if possible.
THEN you'd need to perform complete disk test with a proper tool which is sensitive enough for problems. This is especially when we speak about an SSD and a tool which may not know it at all, which is not really compatible with it.
So I'd recommend to use Disk menu -> Surface test -> Read test in Hard Disk Sentinel - and if it reports no NEW current pending sectors (the counter does not increase) then you can keep using the drive.
If the Current pending sector counter is not zero, then you may try Disk menu -> Surface test -> Disk Repair test in Hard Disk Sentinel to stabilize these sectors and ideally then everything will be (and remain) stable.

Also you may try to verify the SSD in a completely different environment: by a different computer, external dock or so. If you see similar behaviour in the Current Pending Sector count attribute - then yes, it would be better to replace.


> try to force reallocation, or leave it as is is and just keep watch for Current Count
> if it is not growing too big and if it keeps getting fixed automatically.

Keep in mind that every "fix" can cause data corruption / data loss. So the proper way is to AVOID the increase of current pending sector attribute by all possible ways. With Hard Disk Sentinel you'll know when the counter changes (which may be missed without constant monitoring) and can react as soon as possible - long before this (or any other) attribute can indicate failure, long before you'd see a non-working drive.

As many times in the forum, I always recommend to use Report menu -> Send test report to developer option, even multiple times eg. once as a base and then when you see any changes. From these reports, it is possible to follow the status changes and these always give better picture and more ideas: for example from a such developer report maybe I can immediately suggest a driver update (as yes, sometimes a bad chipset driver is in the background).

I swapped out SATA cable first with one of my HDD's. It didn't help so then I also swapped PSU cable, and I'm not sure if this did fix it or not. I just left that 1 HDD unplugged for now, since it's just a 1 TB storage HDD that's pretty much full anyways, so I haven't been using it for months and just realized I might as well to keep it unplugged for now instead of having it booting each time and degrading over time.

So basically after swapping PSU cable too, I have been trying to force and find a pending sector, going all over the disk, launching software from it etc. and in the end I wasn't able to. I was thinking this might have been it. It would also make sense given just as you said, if it was caused by something else and not related to the disk drive itself, it made sense why pending sectors kept reappearing. The drive itself was fixing it automatically, but because the cause was the cable and not the drive itself, that's why those pending sectors kept reappearing over and over again and stopped only after I switched out the cable.



The 4th one from the top - 29.08 16:28 - is after I had replaced only SATA cable and after seeing that it didn't help, I turned off my PC and switched PSU cable as well. Few minutes after at 16:34 it fixed itself as usual. This is when I tried to force and find new pending sectors by using the disk as I mentioned ealier. I couldn't, so I just left like 10 different opened folders of that disk and went to do other stuff. Somewhere around 11pm I checked the disk again and noticed the pending sectors unfortunately came back again an hour ago at 10pm.

Since it looked like that different PSU cable didn't help either, I decided to run Disk menu -> Surface test -> Read test.

Read test was finished 10 minutes after midnight and surprisingly it went smoothly and no new pending sectors appeared after it. Out of curiosity I also ran quick heath scan in HDTune that previously had revealed 50 pending sectors and this time it also went smoothly without any hitch or freeze and pending sectors count did not increase at all. I also read up about darker green blocks here https://www.hdsentinel.com/help/en/61_surfacetest.html so as long as it's only few of them and they're in random spots(just like in my test) then that's fine.

Given the results, that pending sectors did not appear after 2 test and I also haven't been able to find a single freezing folder on the disk, now I'm wondering if it was indeed a faulty PSU cable, and if that pending sector at 10 pm is just a random false report, just like in my other MX500. I read that the latest firmware for it didn't actually fix those false reports and people ended up disabling attribute 197 in SMART of their monitoring softwares.

The change of 0 -> 1 (and back) for these Crucial SSDs are "normal". This does not cause any problems in the operation and Hard Disk Sentinel automatically knows/ignores this (since first detected in 2019, as discussed in this forum topic: https://www.hdsentinel.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=18368 )

The important is that there should be no BIGGER change, the value should not increase further if the operating environment is stable.

Yes, the problem could be the cable (or "just" the connection). Some SSDs are more sensitive to these and this is why it is possible that there was no similar with the hard disk - but the cable/connection caused (real) pending sectors for this SSD.

If the status, Health remains stable (even if the attribute changes from 0 to 1 and then back, and this may be logged, but the Health remains stable) then you do not need to worry - especially if the real usage confirms too that there are no pauses, delays which you encountered previously.