I'm not sure if a "normal amount" of seek errors even exists for a drive. My dilemma is, I ran Spinrite on a 60GB Fujitsu 2.5" drive. My results are as follows:



I'm pretty sure I'm ok with the ECC Corrections, but I'm not sure if I'm within a normal boundary of seek errors....if there even is one. I ran Fujitsu's testing utility and it passed, finishing the extended scan in 40 minutes. This is a laptop I am checking out for my father with which he is reporting slow boot up performance and occasional freezing. It's an older Dell Inspiron, but I know the tech guy that issued the laptop to him did just perform a clean OS install.

These seek errors that Spinrite is reporting are worrying me and I'm wondering if this drive is slowly biting the dust, even though the Fujitsu utility says it's okay. Is there actually a seek error threshold for certain drives, or is my drive needing to be replaced (IMO, there should be no seek errors).

I don't understand the "error rates".

It appears that ...

error rate = error count / 127

So does this mean that the test runs through 127 passes, and that the error rate is the number of errors per pass? If so, then the figure is meaningless.

A more meaningful result would be ...

error rate = total errors / total operations

ie, seek error rate = total seek errors / total seeks

Try a SMART diagnostic such as HDDScan, HD Sentinel, or smartmontools.

HD Sentinel (DOS / Windows/Linux):

http://www.hdsentinel.com/

HDDScan for Windows:

http://hddscan.com/

smartmontools (Linux/Windows):

http://sourceforge.net/projects/smartmontools/files/

http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/smartm ... i/Download

This program is a drive killer. Use MHDD if you want correct information on this drive. If you want to kill your drive continue to use this program.

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Iorana Haraharaini

I understand that many, if not most, of Steve Gibson's claims may be bogus, but yours doesn't make any sense to me either.

Can you explain how reading and writing using standard ATA commands can damage a drive? Is it the sheer number and frequency of operations that overstresses the drive?

Have you ever been in the middle of imaging a drive when it died? Ok, now imagine that instead of imaging it you're telling it to read and write on known bad sectors with potentially weak or failing heads hundreds of times in a row, on purpose.


You're right, that IS a dilemma.

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