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I have got a HDD drive which has gone into pre-failure state with big count of relocated sectors.

However I figured out that the problem is possibly with a HDD slot (cable) but not with a disk — when I plugged other HDDs to this slot they started working slowly and showing some seek errors and pending sectors. But these errors eventually disappear if I plug these drives to another controller. So I think that the pre-fail HDD here is not really failing.

Is it possible to force SMART to re-check Relocated and Offline Uncorrectable sectors to recover them if the failure has gone?

timurb
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2 Answers2

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However I figured out that the problem is possibly with a HDD slot (cable) but not with a disk

Äh - dude, get your facts straight. SMART is totally disc level. Disc finds rror when reading, disc relocates, reports it. The cabling does not enter into the game at all. SMART is totally disc internal.

How did you get the funny idea the cable would make a difference?

The only count where the cabling etc. may come into play is smart external counts (aborted commands, for example). But none platter side.

TomTom
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  • Why then I get no errors (Seek_Errors) when I put the HDD into the other computer? There were some dozens of them and the number was continuously raising until I put the HDD into other computer and they decreased to 0. Of course this happend not for SMART failing disk but for another one which I tried to plug instead of it. – timurb Oct 09 '10 at 12:31
  • SMART reports some data transfer errors (which could be caused by a failing drive, cable, or controller; SMART will not know which). It will not show up as reallocated sectors or seek errors however, those are definitely a permanently failing disk. Those errors are not transient, they are permanent. – Chris S Dec 12 '10 at 21:40
  • Exactly. Basically SMART is the internal perforamnce counter. Some counters are internal work, some external. For example some of my discs have high aborted commands - seems the discs did not like the SAS enclosure they were in (work fine outside). But reallocations are platter side. – TomTom Dec 12 '10 at 21:43
  • The only 2 ways disk location within the computer case can have a difference are as follows: (1) the location is poorly ventilated and disk overheats (see temperature SMART data), or (2) power source is bad and the power cord running to said location cannot handle the power requirements of the disk drive. Bad power source can cause random errors in any electronic device. The only way to rule (2) out is to use another power source and see if the problem goes away. – Mikko Rantalainen Jan 11 '13 at 06:47
  • SMART also includes the UDMA CRC Error Count attribute which talks entirely about the interface. I agree that the slot is unlikely to be culprit but the fact is that SMART includes link errors info too. It doesn't use it for SMART trip purposes. – Baruch Even Sep 27 '13 at 18:06
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I agree with TomTom here and don't believe that a cable is going to affect bad relocated sectors.

However it is possible that a sector is marked as bad and relocated in error but I don't think the cable has anything to do with this. SpinRite on level 5 will check every sector and will unmark those which are marked as bad and if the sector checks out returning it back into the normal pool and freeing up a spare sector.

However given the cost of SpinRite, the cost of a drive, and the amount of time it takes to run on level 5, days on a modern drive, just replace the drive. I would only resort to the SpinRite approach if data recovery was required.

3dinfluence
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