I have a WD 6400aaks 00A7B0 (640GB, Blue) hard disk and recently i decided to check its SMART info, to see if it's ok (not because of warnings signs, but just as a precaution). The hdd was (and is) working fine in my pc, but the SMART utility showed that it had a warning sign at the "Current Pending Sector" (pic: http://www.imagebam.com/image/791e1495294492). Then i scanned the surface and HD Tune showed 2 red squares (pic: http://www.imagebam.com/image/ebc49795294658). And finally, i used WD's hdd utility, DLG Diag, which gave errors at both of the tests (quick test pic: http://www.imagebam.com/image/c0296995294948 and extended test pic: http://www.imagebam.com/image/6170c995295115).
So, in the end, i just reformatted the hdd and wrote zeros on it, preparing to send it to RMA. But, to my amazement, after the reformat the SMART shows no warning signs, no pending sectors or any other errors. Both DLG Diag's tests pass with no errors and HDD Tune surface test shows no red sectors. No errors after hours of tests.
Can anyone explain me what happened? Is my hdd still safe to use for data storage? I can't even send it to RMA anymore, because all tests pass.
Is my HDD still safe to use?
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Is my HDD still safe to use?
Last edited by DG on Tue Aug 31, 2010 2:44 pm, edited 3 times in total.
Minute surface errors can sometimes be filtered out by the drives own spare sectors and stay fully operational, but to my experience these errors are usually signs of bigger problems to come in the near future. Use the drive for non-critical tasks and scan it now and then to see if more errors come up with time. One could say not to trust the drive but then again no single harddrive should ever be trusted much. 