Im still learning but would you agree that this drive is on the rocky road......?

If so - why?

As I say I'm still learning a lot and if there is pending sectors that dont go anywhere this means they are in limbo? And maybe explains why windows wants to run checkdisk every boot?

Any good reading materials on how to interperate SMART data?

Cheers

And what do you want to do ?

I wouldn't trust that drive with important data. It has already developed 6 bad sectors and others will probably occur in due time.

"Pending" sectors are those that have been identified as problematic by the drive and are marked for reallocation at some future time. In most cases this will require that the OS writes to these sectors so that the drive knows that the original data are no longer of any value.

The meaning of SMART attributes is not subject to any standard, so manufacturers will often define and interpret them in wildly different ways, even between their own models, and sometimes even between different firmware versions of the same model.

FWIW, I like this reference:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.M.A.R.T.

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

Yes.


It is a Maxtor 6Y.

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You don't have to backup all of your files, just the ones you want to keep.

What do you have against 6Y ?!?

Nothing in particular - but does the state of the drive relate to checkdisk always wanting to run?



Is there a way to force this, or indeed is there any point?


The way i seem to think (and maybe wrong) is that a drive has x amount of 'reserved' sectors to use for when bad sectors appear. When the 'reserved' amount is used up then it stays as pending and causes more problems. Is that the most simplistic way of looking at it of should I just go home now..... lol

Backup your data and then zero-fill your drive. This should cause the drive to "repair" any pending sectors.

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

It won't. And it likely has a lot of slow blocks too + UNC.

And even if you manage to "flatten" , during normal R/W the problem will reappear in no time.