My old HDD had 48 bad sectors 2 weeks ago but now 40?!!!!

[pedrolo]

Hello,

My 7 years old Seagate ST1000DM003 HDD had 48 bad sectors 2 weeks ago reported in the Smarttools report (inside Linux gnome tool called "Disks" in "Smart data and autotests").
But now it has 40.

I didn't do anything special meanwhile. What happened?
Did it heal itself?

[northwind]

No, it most probably re-allocated those bad sectors to some other place. S.M.A.R.T drive!

[pepe]

I would think they were candidates for realloc but after a subsequent write op those 8 sectors were readable, thus removed from AltList.

pepe

[pedrolo]

No, it most probably re-allocated those bad sectors to some other place. S.M.A.R.T drive!

If that is so, then maybe it did that a million times and in fact I have 0 working sector?? lol

I would think they were candidates for realloc but after a subsequent write op those 8 sectors were readable, thus removed from AltList.

pepe

So it was a false positive from SMART??

[pepe]

they were unreadable, thus added to candidate list. If a write op is made to the same sector, drive tries to write and verify, if it is ok, sector is removed from candidate list. If verification fails, sector is permanently relocated to the spare area and data is written there.
pepe

[pedrolo]

they were unreadable, thus added to candidate list. If a write op is made to the same sector, drive tries to write and verify, if it is ok, sector is removed from candidate list. If verification fails, sector is permanently relocated to the spare area and data is written there.
pepe

so now they are readable? they have been fixed?

[pepe]

the 8 sectors removed from ALT, yes, the rest is still there, but i'm not sure smart would tell you if they are pending or alts

pepe

[Arch Stanton]

Post SMART data

[pedrolo]

Post SMART data

Code:

smartctl 6.2 2013-07-26 r3841 [x86_64-linux-3.13.0-139-generic] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-13, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Model Family:     Seagate Barracuda 7200.14 (AF)
Device Model:     ST1000DM003-1CH162
Serial Number:    Z1D855NQ
LU WWN Device Id: 5 000c50 06571b094
Firmware Version: CC47
User Capacity:    1 000 204 886 016 bytes [1,00 TB]
Sector Sizes:     512 bytes logical, 4096 bytes physical
Rotation Rate:    7200 rpm
Device is:        In smartctl database [for details use: -P show]
ATA Version is:   ACS-2, ACS-3 T13/2161-D revision 3b
SATA Version is:  SATA 3.1, 6.0 Gb/s (current: 6.0 Gb/s)
Local Time is:    Sun Oct 10 21:05:54 2021 CEST

==> WARNING: A firmware update for this drive is available,
see the following Seagate web pages:
http://knowledge.seagate.com/articles/en_US/FAQ/207931en
http://knowledge.seagate.com/articles/en_US/FAQ/223651en

SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

General SMART Values:
Offline data collection status:  (0x82)   Offline data collection activity
               was completed without error.
               Auto Offline Data Collection: Enabled.
Self-test execution status:      (   0)   The previous self-test routine completed
               without error or no self-test has ever
               been run.
Total time to complete Offline
data collection:       (  575) seconds.
Offline data collection
capabilities:           (0x7b) SMART execute Offline immediate.
               Auto Offline data collection on/off support.
               Suspend Offline collection upon new
               command.
               Offline surface scan supported.
               Self-test supported.
               Conveyance Self-test supported.
               Selective Self-test supported.
SMART capabilities:            (0x0003)   Saves SMART data before entering
               power-saving mode.
               Supports SMART auto save timer.
Error logging capability:        (0x01)   Error logging supported.
               General Purpose Logging supported.
Short self-test routine
recommended polling time:     (   1) minutes.
Extended self-test routine
recommended polling time:     ( 104) minutes.
Conveyance self-test routine
recommended polling time:     (   2) minutes.
SCT capabilities:           (0x3085)   SCT Status supported.

SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 10
Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE      UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
  1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate     0x000f   117   099   006    Pre-fail  Always       -       140347576
  3 Spin_Up_Time            0x0003   097   097   000    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  4 Start_Stop_Count        0x0032   097   097   020    Old_age   Always       -       3828
  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0033   100   100   010    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  7 Seek_Error_Rate         0x000f   084   060   030    Pre-fail  Always       -       312438837
  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   082   082   000    Old_age   Always       -       15935
10 Spin_Retry_Count        0x0013   100   100   097    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
12 Power_Cycle_Count       0x0032   097   097   020    Old_age   Always       -       3823
183 Runtime_Bad_Block       0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
184 End-to-End_Error        0x0032   100   100   099    Old_age   Always       -       0
187 Reported_Uncorrect      0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
188 Command_Timeout         0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0 0 0
189 High_Fly_Writes         0x003a   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
190 Airflow_Temperature_Cel 0x0022   073   059   045    Old_age   Always       -       27 (Min/Max 23/28)
191 G-Sense_Error_Rate      0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       51
193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032   098   098   000    Old_age   Always       -       4615
194 Temperature_Celsius     0x0022   027   041   000    Old_age   Always       -       27 (0 6 0 0 0)
197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0012   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       40
198 Offline_Uncorrectable   0x0010   100   100   000    Old_age   Offline      -       40
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count    0x003e   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
240 Head_Flying_Hours       0x0000   100   253   000    Old_age   Offline      -       16148h+39m+54.824s
241 Total_LBAs_Written      0x0000   100   253   000    Old_age   Offline      -       37689960728
242 Total_LBAs_Read         0x0000   100   253   000    Old_age   Offline      -       34666652521

SMART Error Log Version: 1
No Errors Logged

SMART Self-test log structure revision number 1
Num  Test_Description    Status                  Remaining  LifeTime(hours)  LBA_of_first_error
# 1  Extended offline    Aborted by host               80%     15736         -
# 2  Conveyance offline  Completed without error       00%     15736         -
# 3  Short offline       Completed without error       00%     15736         -

SMART Selective self-test log data structure revision number 1
SPAN  MIN_LBA  MAX_LBA  CURRENT_TEST_STATUS
    1        0        0  Not_testing
    2        0        0  Not_testing
    3        0        0  Not_testing
    4        0        0  Not_testing
    5        0        0  Not_testing
Selective self-test flags (0x0):
  After scanning selected spans, do NOT read-scan remainder of disk.
If Selective self-test is pending on power-up, resume after 0 minute delay.


[pepe]

Code:

  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0033   100   100   010    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0012   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       40

yep, 40 are pending, 0 reallocated. They might be soft bads, ie they might be OK after next write.

[pedrolo]

ok thank you, should I force write on them too?

I've read you can do commands like: sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda6 bs=1024 count=1 seek=303975848
to write on a specific block

Or should I just wait until it naturally writes to them?

[pepe]

you could try overwriting the whole data area (after backing up the data of course ), then running a read test. After the write phase SMART should show if the pending sectors were permanently reallocated or removed from pending.

[pedrolo]

ok i might try ty