Hi all, cherry post here hoping to find some information regarding whether or not I have a valid reason to RMA a drive.

Quick bit of history then, I have 2 Samsung SpinPoint F2 154UI's and I recently had a "smart event logged" notification during POST so I installed hard disk sentinel which told me one of the drives was at 41% health and it had exceed the raw read & soft read error rate threshold, there was also 1 offline uncorrectable sector count.

Using seatools for DOS the drive failed both short and long tests so I carried out a 'low level format' using the LLF Tool. Now the drive passes both tests and also indicated health in hard disk sentinel is now 80% (raw read error rate now indicates 99 although the worst logged is 1).

To be perfectly honest i'm not too clued up on how to interpret all the smart data but when comparing it with my other 154UI all the variables which count errors have a far larger count on the drive which I had to format, is this an indication of anything? Hard disk sentinel says everything is ok but if I view the drive in HD Tuned it states "Failed" highlighting the exceeded threshold for raw read errors.

Looking on Seagates website it does say
"If the BIOS or third-party utility still reports an error with S.M.A.R.T. after SeaTools tests have passed and you low-level formatted the drive then it is recommended that you replace the drive. For more information regarding warranty please visit the Warranty Services Page."
http://knowledge.seagate.com/articles/en_US/FAQ/189431en?language=ko_KR

Basically do I have anything to worry about with this drive now and do I have any grounds to RMA it?

many thanks, Lee

It would help if you supplied the 2 full sets of SMART data (including raw values) from the "problem" drive which you have quoted from i.e. (a) from before you did the "LLF" and (b) from after you did that. I'm not promising to spend long giving a full analysis of exactly how I would interpret that data, but without that data, I can only guess...

So, based on your story and with no other info, my votes are:


Yes, possibly. I certainly wouldn't trust it But as always, as long as you do frequent & verified backups, then a drive failure (if it happens) shouldn't be a disaster for you.


Perhaps not, or at least not easily, because the SeaTools tests now pass! If only you hadn't done anything after they failed, then you had a clear case of a drive failing its tests and there should have been little argument for an RMA.

Although I think there is still evidence of the previous SMART failure, you have probably made it harder for yourself to show a clear fault, as SeaTools no longer fails its tests, so how do you prove to either the retailer (or Seagate, depending on which route for attempted RMA you intended to use), that the drive is faulty? It partly depends on the current SMART data, and on how good the technician is, at whichever place you try to RMA the drive.