Re: [smartmontools-support] bad sectors with Seagate Momentus 5400.6 series

[Marti R. <ma...@ju...>]

On Mon, Mar 8, 2010 at 4:24 PM, Xavier Chantry <cha...@gm...> wrote:
> So now all my questions :
> 1) Can a lack of power cause bad sectors (instead of the disk simply
> refusing to work) ?

Yes, in theory. I have heard from other sources that when a drive
loses power in the middle of a write, it can create bad sectors
despite the sectors still being physically OK.

I've also seen some USB drives that repeatedly try to spin-up, but
fail due to insufficient power. The USB hub is a suspect here.

But a standard USB cable straight from your laptop should be enough to
power 2.5" 5400RPM drives.

> 3) Coud/Should I still try to get these two disks replaced , as they
> are only 2-3 months old, but have 2-3 years warranty ?

> The Seagate Drive instantly fails with short test, but I suspect a
> full format would also fix that. Is this what the technical support
> should expect me to do ?

According to some Seagate support staff, their SMART attribute values
are "encrypted" (yeah right!) and not enough to get a replacement
drive.

However, they do replace drives when the one of the SMART tests fail
(the same tests that SeaTools will run).

> 4) What is a high number of bad / reallocated sectors where one should
> start worrying ?

You should be worried if the value is consistently increasing. All
drives where I have seen over 100 reallocated sectors have failed
pretty soon afterwards. It helps to run SMART tests often.

Regards,
Marti