Reported Uncorrectable Errors

[Haole Boy]

Aloha. I have yet another hard drive question. Customer has an older laptop that is running REALLY slow. I ran gSmartControl to take a look at the SMART indicators. I was expecting to see the "usual suspects" like Reallocated Event Count, Current Pending Sector, etc be non-zero.. But, much to my surprise all of these had a value of 0 (zero).

However "Reported Uncorrect(able errors)" has a value of 532578959360. Doing some research on this indicator, the Acronis KB says:

Although this parameter is not considered critical by the most hardware vendors, degradation of this parameter may indicate electromechanical problems of the disk. Regular backup is recommended. If no other (critical) parameters report a problem, hardware replacement is recommended on mission critical systems only.

So, I'd like to ask the experts if they agree with this description. And also if they feel this could be a cause for the very slow performance of this machine. At this point I can't make a recommendation on what to do to fix this slowpoke.

Here is the SMART info:

ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME FLAGS VALUE WORST THRESH FAIL RAW_VALUE
1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate POSR-K 100 083 062 - 0
2 Throughput_Performance P-S--K 100 100 040 - 0
3 Spin_Up_Time PO---K 176 100 033 - 1
4 Start_Stop_Count -O--CK 099 099 000 - 1719
5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct PO--CK 100 100 005 - 0
7 Seek_Error_Rate POSR-K 100 100 067 - 0
8 Seek_Time_Performance P-S--K 100 100 040 - 0
9 Power_On_Hours -O--CK 091 091 000 - 4190
10 Spin_Retry_Count PO--CK 100 100 060 - 0
12 Power_Cycle_Count -O--CK 099 099 000 - 1690
183 Runtime_Bad_Block -O--CK 100 100 000 - 0
184 End-to-End_Error PO--CK 100 100 097 - 0
187 Reported_Uncorrect -O--CK 100 100 000 - 532578959360
188 Command_Timeout -O--CK 100 100 000 - 81612505101
190 Airflow_Temperature_Cel -O---K 064 052 045 - 36 (Min/Max 26/36)
191 G-Sense_Error_Rate -O--CK 079 079 000 - 5398
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count -O--CK 100 100 000 - 1179666
193 Load_Cycle_Count -O--CK 098 098 000 - 26567
196 Reallocated_Event_Count -O--CK 100 100 000 - 0
197 Current_Pending_Sector -O--CK 100 100 000 - 0
198 Offline_Uncorrectable ----CK 100 100 000 - 0
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count -OS-CK 100 100 000 - 0
223 Load_Retry_Count -O-R-K 100 100 000 - 0

Mahalo,

Harry Z

 

[Haole Boy]

Hmm... looks like I posted this to the wrong forum. How do I move it to the Tech-to-Tech forum?

 

[Porthos]

I would just put in a SSD. Stop trying to fight/worry if the drive is good.

 

[Computer Bloke]

Yes to the SSD, of course, but it's also worth noting that if you convert the number of errors from decimal (532578959360) to hexadecimal (0x007C002E0000) you suddenly get a number with a suspiciously large number of zeroes in it. This looks much more like an error in the SMART information or a misinterpretation of that information by gSmartControl than a true representation of an underlying problem. My guess would be that it's a 16-bit number (0) that's been blown out of proportion by being interpreted as a 48- or 64-bit number.

 

[Porthos]

And also if they feel this could be a cause for the very slow performance of this machine. At this point I can't make a recommendation on what to do to fix this slowpoke.

Would be nice to know the spec's of this "old" computer.

 

[Mick]

What does Crystal Disk report?

 

[lcoughey]

Were you able to clone every sector of the drive at full speed, without any read errors?

 

[HFultzjr]

Save the data.
Put in an SSD.

 

[Kitten Kong]

Hmm... looks like I posted this to the wrong forum. How do I move it to the Tech-to-Tech forum?

Thread moved to Tech to Tech.

As above, anything suspicious, throw in a SSD. You won't regret it, and the client will love you.

 

[Markverhyden]

older laptop that is running REALLY slow

My diagnosis is it needs a new SSD.

But seriously. I rarely bother running any kind of HD reporting/testing tool. Only if the drive is supposed to be relatively new or the customer specifically requested it. And that's only after making an image. Nothing like having a patient die on the table with no backup.

 

[glennd]

Seagate drives have a habit of showing ridiculous figures. Still, it's worth firing up Resource Monitor to see if there's a particular process that's savaging the disk.