Is my hard drive failing?

I wouldn't touch Seagate drives, as it is theirs a class action lawsuit going around vs Seagate because their drives are dying all over the place and people are pissed.

I'm betting the target HD that was 4096 is now 512.

Good thinking, that's very likely.

LOL I just bought 15 seagate drives for a project I am doing shadow wish I had known this before, now that may be why they where so cheap. dooop

One thing i did find is with a failing hd i had windows showed it as fine along with the hdd testing software of various vendors but I installed linux on it and it showed it as critical and failing and speccy strangely enough showed it was bad way before scan disk picked anything up.

Edited by HolyCowz, 27 January 2017 - 05:52 AM.

I wouldn't touch Seagate drives, as it is theirs a class action lawsuit going around vs Seagate because their drives are dying all over the place and people are pissed.

I have two 1TB's that's been running quite well for over three years, both the ST1000DM003, that just last week ordered another for $42 on promo while still available. They're not dying at my place, actually thriving quite well & I'm happy as can be. If one of the older fails, that's what I create backup images for. While I'm not on the PC with the HDD, check out the bookmark to the benchmark below, over 100% is fantastic for a HDD & as an overall PC, just one point from all UFO scores. Funny, the HDD is rated better than the RAM. 

http://www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/2157372

While I know these has a 2 year warranty versus the 5 that the WD RE4 has, the latest version of the latter model hasn't had the outstanding reviews that the SATA-2 models had, plus the ST1000DM003 is as fast as a HDD as I've ever seen (first purchased as OEM in my XPS 8700). Haven't had a chance to install the last one yet, though it wouldn't surprise me if it held up just as well. Yet am going to install soon & test it out, normally problems will be in first few weeks, or will run fine for years. 

However, one thing that I did notice about that model, go past 1TB, and the reviews gets more mixed, the larger, the more (cannot post a link to HDD due to a Newegg promo code on the largest version due to Forum rules). Yet anyone can visit Newegg & key in the model above & see for themselves that the 1TB is the best rated model of the series. 

I still have WD RE4's purchased in mid to late 2012 still in warranty, while these aren't as fast as the Seagate model above, still are reliable workhorse HDD's, what they were designed for, 24/7 non-stop use. 

Another thing about this 1TB ST1000DM003, both are as quiet as a mouse. We'll see how the 3rd does.

I don't know if all seagate drives are effected but when a company starts pumping out trash it sets off alarm bell in my head at to whats going on with that company products all the way around, if you want a good read on that topic check out the IMB Deathstar hard drives scandal.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/3028981/storage/seagate-slapped-with-a-class-action-lawsuit-over-hard-drive-failure-rates.html

https://www.google.ca/search?q=seagate+hdd+fail+law&gbv=1&sei=KDCLWOePDKbB6ATd5rzYCQ

Edited by shadow_647, 27 January 2017 - 06:34 AM.

I've found all spinning rust drives equally crap in bursts and phases over the years. I've speculated before that they may all even be made at the same factory... lol

Yes it is now 512 bytes. Does it mean something not good? HDD will perform worse? Or what?   Will it get restored to 4096 if I format it?

It's just got logical sectors of 512 written in physical sectors of 4096.

Smaller logical sectors perform slightly slower, but have less unused allocated disk space wastage.

I'd leave it as it is if I was you.

Ok thanks I will leave it. I don´have time to format the drive anyway. It works just fine. 

It only really used to matter in the old days when we were all using FAT32 file system.

Glad you're sorted now with your new drive.

I've found all spinning rust drives equally crap in bursts and phases over the years. I've speculated before that they may all even be made at the same factory... lol

Actually, one component of many brands are, the spindles. This is why many brands shipped a few months are the Thailand floods were having failures (even if not assembled there), and many of the OEM's responded accordingly. Still at a self-inflated price, a reduced warranty across the board was their answer. Only a few select models (examples are WD Black/RE4) still carries 5 year warranties, and because of this, costs more. Ironically, I had just ordered a 1TB Samsung HD103SJ from Amazon for $49.99, and when I went to track the package, was already shipped fortunately, though the price had doubled when I checked the shipping status. And upon registering the drive, came to find out that instead of the 3 year warranty the exact same size & model ordered on Newegg for the same price a few months earlier, the newer one had only a year of coverage. By the time the HDD arrived, the price had tripled over what I paid to $149.99.

Today, both are holding up well as backup drives, as not long afterwards, purchased my first SSD, a 128GB Crucial m4, to this day, still has 98% lifespan left. That's amazing, considering the SSD was purchased in early 2012, and a few months later, a 180GB Intel 330 was added, which still shows 99% lifespan by the Intel SSD Toolbox.

Because of their declaring of a shortage that never was (only higher pricing), the SSD industry caught the HDD OEM's with their pants down and seized the moment with drastic price drops & saturating the market, winning many newcomers with fast SATA-3 HDD's, though was compatible with SATA-2 & even 1st gen SATA systems. Although HDD pricing gradually dropped, the damage was forever done. Most anyone who has ran their OS on a reliable SSD will never turn back to HDD's for that purpose, though may have HDD's for Data installed.

As to HDD's failing, that's the way it's always been since I've been involved with computers, sometimes it's luck of the draw, though normally (though not always) the HDD's will show signs of issues in the first few days, if not out of the box, to the first 5-6 months. If these have survived that long w/out issues, then usually one has a good drive that should last for years.

However, note that corporations are steadily shaving here & there, penny pinching for profit margins, it wouldn't surprise me in the least that the HDD's of today are not of the same quality as a decade ago, when SATA-2 drives were up & rising, and SATA-1 models that were still the majority are still in use today (I have several of these). Other than their slowness, only one makes a clicking sound, and that's just at startup, a SATA-1 WD 40GB WD400BD-22LRA0. Though it spins at 7200 RPM & has a 2MB cache, just a little faster than the late IDE HDD's with the same RPM & cache. I'll give the drive credit, it performed well through both the Consumer & Release Previews of Windows 8 for the most part of 2012 w/out any issues, other than the click when started. Since then, has been boxed & in my collection of these drives. 

One final note, anyone who purchased 'White Label' drives from eBay that's lookalikes of popular drives of the past are paying for trouble, because these aren't refurbished by an approved OEM facility which has a room cleaner than a surgical one. These could have been refurbished anywhere, I made the mistake of purchasing one & the drive performed more poorly than the one it was going to replace. Yet I was refunded & told to keep or toss the drive, whichever I preferred.

Cat

Edited by cat1092, 31 January 2017 - 06:13 AM.

Hi, 

i have problem with my pc, sometimes usually when i use skype video call (like today) all crash down. I got just white square on screen and must reboot pc. When he tried to turn on, it run check disk and reported some errors, so i was searching for some tool to diagnostic it, and downloaded hd sentinel. I run it several times, i will post last report. I need advice. Should i replace HDD and is it dieng? Please help. I did fast small backup ( pictures, music and things without i can not). im very worried about that estimated liuifetime: says 68 days, and in first run was 71. So it shows it goes down more. Thanks

here is report: 

Edited by Natalija, 12 March 2017 - 07:20 PM.

Hi Natalija,

Please go to the forum here and click the black "Start new topic" on the top right  of the screen to create a new thread, to assist you.

Regards

TsVk!

New topic, as requested by most recent poster, at https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/t/641928/hdd-problem/#entry4198865 .

This topic is now closed to avoid confusion.

Louis