In the 4-yr old ThinkPad laptop I have a Hitachi Travelstar 7200rpm spinner. SMART reports reallocated sector count as zero, but recently Reallocation Event Count began climbing. Apparently that parameter counts sector remaps, both successful and failed. Talking about confusing. Anyway, Kyle Katarn mentioned to me long ago, when it was 11, to watch this count, so I do, on and off. It was 11 a year ago, slowly increasing, then faster since win10-1703 came in on Aug.13. Reallocated events took a huge jump yesterday by 70 when i ran chkdsk /r which reported some volume bitmap corrections and all ok. My questions are - why is it reallocating? Is it really? How serious is it? - how close am I to have to restore images of my 4 partitions onto a new drive? How can I tell when things are running nice and fast. I'm not too eager to replace a drive if I don't need to, when I can't even get to the screw that the manual mantions - it's bolted shut.
My HP laptop had the same 7200 RPM HDD. After 4 years of daily use it exhibited the same problem you're experiencing, bad blocks (that's why it's reallocating)! Be sure you have good backup images of your system and personal data on an external drive and replace your failing HDD with a new one, or much better yet, an SSD (which I got for my HP) ....then restore your latest good image(s) to your new drive. Do this ASAP!!! What do you mean when you say the screw (that secures the HDD panel) is bolted shut?
If you go the Overview tab in Hard Disk Sentinel, it will give you a clear explanation of the current state of the hard drive, and will tell you if it recommends you replace the drive.
It does give you an estimated time left in hdsentinel. I find it pessimistic but still worth being cautious and changing when there are big changes in the overall health of the drive.
If me, I would run chkdsk /r on the drive. Note the /r switch "implies" [includes the functions of the] the /f switch. Using /r includes more tests and will attempt to repair any bad clusters it fines. Note this could (likely will) take several to many hours to complete and may appear to be hung up. Just let it run. It will complete eventually. I typically disable sleep modes and let i run overnight. The problem with SMART errors is they don't really indicate failure will occur, only that it is possible. When it might happen remains unknown. It could still be years off, or tomorrow. The first obvious step is to make sure you have a good backup of your data. Then start saving your pennies for a replacement. I recommend going SSD.
There is supposed to be a screw. All I see is a black circle. Maybe I have to drill it out or something
It does not recommend replacement. But considering the count increases (today to 141), I will be replacing. On Sept29 the green health was 82%, and yesterday was green 70%.
I did run chkdsk c: /f /r on bootup. I mentioned it above. That's when the count leaped by huge amount. I'm afraid it'll be tomorrow. Too bad we have to guess. Yes, I have images of System_Drv, windows 7, windows 10 partitions, and syncback copies of the data partition. Will be doing new image today and hope to survive another day or two. I'd like to have SSD, but since I already have a replacement drive, I'll probably won't.
It's fading out like mentioned. Time for a replacement after backing things up. This happens and we just have to deal with it when it shows up.
Could the screw have come loose and is now gone? - is there a hole inside that black circle? Upload a photo of the laptop's underside and a closeup of that black circle.
it was a flexible piece of plastic which I removed with a very thin surgical knife. Screw was ok. 4 more tiny screws on the drive. I got it all assembled ok. my toshiba laptop was simpler to deal with. I started restoring image after initial fight over somethinng with linking and intel bios [MBR mode]
I suppose I should tell the end of this story: 32 minutes to restore images, all done, and has been fine since then I forgot to come back here to write this. Big thanks to all.
