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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Re-allocated Bad Sectors in HDDs

You should always take them seriously if the drives are being used for footage or editing. On your average system HDD, however, they don't mean much of anything until you really start to see the numbers go up. That's a sign of hardware failure or something wrong with the hardware in your PC. It can be caused by anything from a design flaw (which might be firmware fixable) to overuse so look logically at the problem before you jump into trying something. Also, the largest HDDs (which have denser platters) will frequently have such problems so you should keep that in mind when buying. In other words, pick the 1TB over the 2TB drive because the 1TB is more reliable and proven at this point. It takes them about a year to a year and a half to nail down design flaws and hardware bugs in new HDD designs when the capacity goes up. The next thing you need to do at this point is check the firmware of your HDDs and see if there are updates from the manufacturers.
 
I have found SMART to be very reliable for telling me when a drive is going to die, on all my RAIDs and at the datacenter I support. I would definitely take those checks seriously.

One thing I have found though is that most manufacturers don't replace a drive under warranty just because of SMART errors. They want that drive to fail completely... And even then, the current trend is they want error codes from their diagnostic software, what a pain.
 
So, on one of my drives, I've seen 6 re-allocated bad sectors over the last 400 hours of uptime - consensus seems to be that I should replace the drive?

I've got another drive that has 1 bad sector in the same amount of time. Is this guy probably ok, at least for a little while?

These are Seagate 7200.11 1.5TB drives.
 
As long as you aren't filling the drive to near capacity and the number isn't steadily increasing per the diagnostic results, you should be fine but you will want to test it frequently for bad sectors so it can remap and reallocate the drive accordingly. If you are using the drive for nothing that is mission critical, then you are in no need to replace it unless the number increases steadily. You may just be getting bad sectors because the disk is slightly defective (compared to low-density disks) and gets worse as time goes by. It's a problem that high-capacity drives have been dealing with for some time. Also, you may want to try another piece of SMART software as different drives will give off different readings with different software. It's the price we pay for lack of an enforceable standard.
 
6 re-allocated sectors is nothing to worry about yet. But it's definitely something to keep monitoring and is a sign of what's to eventually come. SMART tells you a lot more than just re-allocations. Be sure you have a proper backup in place at all times.

Personally, I would replace the drives simply because they're Seagate 1.5TB drives. I literally have had more of those particular drives fail on me in the last year than just about all other drives ever, combined. Those drives are garbage. The Seagate 1TB are good and the 2TB seem to be working well. It seems the current 1.5TB drives are holding up better, but initially they had lots of duds. Lots... To the point where even the Seagate support people were bad-mouthing and joking about the 1.5TB drives when I'd make my weekly call to RMA 2 or 3 of them.

When were they purchased and what is the firmware revision?
 
Ok - I'm glad to hear it's not just me having bad luck with the Seagate 1.5's.

Drives are firmware CC1H, and were purchased about 2-3 months ago (although one died and another started dying, so two of them are more recent). To their credit, Seagate took them back no questions asked. I think that's the latest firmware - nothing shows up when I enter the serial on Seagate's firmware update checker thingy.

Jeff, you mention the Seagate 1TB as good and the 2TB as seeming ok - are these your choices these days?
 
I think the best 1TB drives right now are the Western Digital Caviar Black X w/6Gbps interface and 64MB cache. The 2TB drives from every manufacturer feel like they're still beta hardware. All of them are slow and clunky. So far, I mostly have experience with the 2TB Hitachi units. No failures yet, but they are definitely a step back in performance from the best 1TB units on the market right now. For right now, I think I would prefer the WD or Hitachi drives. Seagate has had a bad run of luck the past couple years. In 2007, they voluntarily recalled huge numbers of 1TB drives.

As for your 1.5TB Seagates, there is actually one newer firmware revision that I'm aware of -- CC1J. However, AFAIK, Seagate has stated that the 1.5TB drives should not be updated and they have not made the firmware directly available. Most all of my drives have been CC1H units and those have pretty much all failed. I have a few CC1J units of which I think I had one failure, but two of them are still working. I'm not sure if the 'J' firmware is newer, it may relate to a slightly different production model and that could be why they don't want end users to update or re-flash the drives.

I still have 4 or 5 of the 1.5TB Seagates sitting here that are dead and I haven't sent them in for replacement. I just got tired of hassling it. I probably should get them replaced and then fire sale them on eBay.
 
I've had 10+ seagate drives ranging from 500GB to 1TB to 1.5TB. Almost everyone of them have bricked by either BSY or the 0MB error. Been tiresome dealing with that but it seems to be cooling now, it still left a bad taste in my mouth with seagate when it comes to that generation. I'll gladly buy from them again, but I've learned now not to rely on a single-generation setup from one manufacturer - this time it turned almost into disaster having an entire RAID bricking one by one!

Bottom line: If you are getting in with those drives that have problems, be sure you understand that they do have problems and that they have affected a lot of people and it's a bitch and very painful to deal with.:banghead:
 
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