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| Thread ID: 108836 | 2010-04-13 12:40:00 | Grounds for RMA of a hard drive? | Agent_24 (57) | PC World Chat |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 876252 | 2010-04-14 07:38:00 | Some reallocated sectors is normal, 2 is probably way less than average for that age drive. All drives will have some bad sectors, even when shipped. The P-list in the firmware remaps bad sectors identified during manufacturing. The G-list remaps newly identified bad sectors throughout the life of the drive. The number of reserved sectors available for reallocation of bad ones varied between models, but I would expect you should have several hundred left. Your drive is working as it is supposed to, If it passes the manufacturers diagnostic, you will have an uphill battle getting it RMA'd. |
fred_fish (15241) | ||
| 876253 | 2010-04-14 07:54:00 | Some reallocated sectors is normal, 2 is probably way less than average for that age drive. All drives will have some bad sectors, even when shipped. The P-list in the firmware remaps bad sectors identified during manufacturing. The G-list remaps newly identified bad sectors throughout the life of the drive. The number of reserved sectors available for reallocation of bad ones varied between models, but I would expect you should have several hundred left. Your drive is working as it is supposed to, If it passes the manufacturers diagnostic, you will have an uphill battle getting it RMA'd. I didn't know that. Most interesting - thanks :D |
george12 (7) | ||
| 876254 | 2010-04-14 12:43:00 | Some reallocated sectors is normal, 2 is probably way less than average for that age drive. All drives will have some bad sectors, even when shipped. The P-list in the firmware remaps bad sectors identified during manufacturing. The G-list remaps newly identified bad sectors throughout the life of the drive. The number of reserved sectors available for reallocation of bad ones varied between models, but I would expect you should have several hundred left. Your drive is working as it is supposed to, If it passes the manufacturers diagnostic, you will have an uphill battle getting it RMA'd. Yes, I know about the lists and I know that reallocation is normal when a sector fails. Google did a large study on drive reliability: We find, for example, that after their first scan error, drives are 39 times more likely to fail within 60 days than drives with no such errors. First errors in reallocations, offline reallocations, and probational counts are also strongly correlated to higher failure probabilities. (static.googleusercontent.com) Also, I have many hard drives which are older (and some much older) than this drive with no reallocated sectors at all. I have also had several drives fail quite quickly after having reallocated sectors, which supports Google's findings. Considering this I would rather not have drives with any issues. If you don't find this to be a problem perhaps you would like to buy my hard drive? :lol: |
Agent_24 (57) | ||
| 876255 | 2010-04-14 12:48:00 | So either RMA the drive or sell it then. I would only do an RMA when a drive has actually failed during the warranty period. |
Sweep (90) | ||
| 876256 | 2010-04-14 17:55:00 | thats a good point re: returns. All of the seagate drives Ive had fail (about 8 so far) have all had to been returned to Singapore. Blimmin heck! In my 16 years of computing I've never had a hard drive failure! (mostly Seagate) What are you doing to those poor devices!? |
Greg (193) | ||
| 876257 | 2010-04-14 22:56:00 | 16 years and no failures? You must be pretty lucky then!! | Agent_24 (57) | ||
| 876258 | 2010-04-15 00:46:00 | Yes, I know about the lists and I know that reallocation is normal when a sector fails. Google did a large study on drive reliability: (static.googleusercontent.com) Also, I have many hard drives which are older (and some much older) than this drive with no reallocated sectors at all. I have also had several drives fail quite quickly after having reallocated sectors, which supports Google's findings. Considering this I would rather not have drives with any issues. If you don't find this to be a problem perhaps you would like to buy my hard drive? :lol: Not wishing to argue with you Agent - you do know more than me after all. However that's the first scan error. The report says 14 times more likely after the first reallocation. And one must remember that the chance of a given drive failing within the next 60 days is a very slim chance, so 14 times that chance is far from indicating imminent failure. As such I would have to say that probably no manufacturer would be willing to replace it, or even should be. At the same time, it makes perfect sense to want to get rid of it, as in Google's tests at least if I remember correctly over 90% of the drives had zero counts for reallocations. However there is always the possibility that a drive you buy might have a few anyway. |
george12 (7) | ||
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