Hi all,

I've got two Samsung Spinpoint F3's with a single WD Green HDD.

The problem is, the newest F3 has got some errors I think...

In HDTune it marks (C5) Current Pending Sector. Current : 74, Worst :74, Data : 2180. So when I click it, it says it has 2180 unstable sectors. I don't really have any knowledge about this, so maybe someone could help me? I believe I have to RMA it since it could crash?
It's still under warrenty.
It's really new, it has only been on for 922 hours (38 days) while my older WD has been on for 6904 hours (287 days) with no problems at all according to HDtune.

My first F3 is a little older, 2093 hours (87 days), but no bad sectors according to HDtune. It does give an error though... (C7) Ultra DMA CRC Error Count. Current 87, Worst 87. Data 7004. So that means 7004 interface communication errors. HDTune says this can be due to a broken cable, but I have tried other SATA cables, even switched some from other HDD's, but the problem is still there.

I believe samsung gives 3 years of warrenty on them, so I could RMA both of them...

If I have to RMA it/them, what would be the best method for making back-ups? They're both 1TB HDD's, and have quite some data on them. The one with the sector errors has my OS, Games and some important downloads on them. The data is backup-able, but would it be possible to back-up the OS in such a way that I could reinstall it in some way that it is back to now, or would I copy this bad sectors with me?

Below are some pictures. The first one is F3#1, that has the sector problem (after I checked for bad sectors via windows on all 3 partitions). The second picture is of the second F3.
Picture 3 and 4 are from yesterday, when I 'discovered' this. The 4th picture are the results of the scan from yesterday.

If someone could help me, that would be really appreciated!

Kind regards,

Bose

Problem with the S.M.A.R.T data is that it's presented in a raw form and you can't figure out pretty much anything from it unless you know what the values should be like for a particular HDD. In Windows I use SpeedFan to read the S.M.A.R.T data 'cause it can dump it to some an analyzer which I find quite useful.
There is also a (distant) possibility that the disk controller on your MB is faulty and causes these erroneous readings. I suggest you run the bad sectors test again to check if the results are consistent.

i had problems for months with an IDE drive dropping out of a raid array i was using...

long story short, i replaced the power supply and i haven't had an error since.

how's your power?

as for getting the data off the drive, if you do choose to RMA it, would probably best to purchase another drive and clone the old one.

I had some room left on my other HDD's.

As for power, can't imagine it can be that, never had a single problem with it, and I also don't want to change it now as I won't upgrade in a while.

I've RMA'd it, and I still have not got it back. The idiots are sending it back to repair a €50 HDD to a professional mechanic which will cost 4x that by now. They are not sending me a new one, so I better hope they fix it for good becaue I want a HDD that is reliable to put my data on it. And I'm getting quite mad of them... I better hope I get it back next week.