SEATools - SMART has been tripped

[goombawaho]

Got a Toshiba hard drive and Windows 7 said the equivalent of "hard drive problem, back up your data". Windows take about 7 minutes to boot, so there is evidence of something going on. I can't get the Toshiba diagnostic utility to allow me to select the drive to analyze it from within Windows 7 or as a slave drive.

Data is still accessible, thank you very much.

Tried running SEATools on it and WD diagnostics and both agree that SMART has detected something. General question not specific to this instance - if SMART is tripped on any of its parameters, do you just give up on the drive - nothing else to do?

 

[rclarke250]

Depends on the drive, and the tools available. I have been able to use the drive fitness tools, to recondition a HGST drive that had a smart error pop up, it has been functioning good for almost a year, but I didn't trust it fully, so it is in a machine that isn't mission critical, i.e, all mp3's and movies have been moved to the NAS. I like to take those drives, and see if I can find some tools to either recondition the drive, so I can use them as a free spare, or target practice for the AK47.

 

[goombawaho]

I've seen drives "repaired" from write fault errors by Western Digital diagnostics but I had never seen any smart error repaired USUALLY because when a SMART error is tripped, the drive has been super toasty.

but I didn't trust it fully

This is not my hard drive but that would be my feeling too if "repaired".

 

[BionicJohn]

I've found that testing a suspect drive in a laptop to be somewhat risky, especially as it's likely to be the boot drive.

I use this -

http://www.lindy.co.uk/usb-2-to-sata-ide-drive-adapter/42868.html

- and hook the 2.5" up to a PC. Then the drive can be examined and, with a bit of luck, data can be salvaged.

WD's "Data Lifeguard Diagnostic for Windows" is a handy tool.

Iechyd da! John
Glannau Mersi, Lloegr.

 

[goombawaho]

Yep - I've got one of those. This is a post-mortem on a customer drive so I don't really care about it in particular. It was more a general question.

 

[BadBigBen]

Goom, afaik Toshiba does not have a diag tool for their drives, I've been using SeaTools (on all drives but WD), WDLifeGuard (on WD drives only), CrystalDiskInfo, HDDScan, or a Parted Magic (LiveLinuxCD) to test/diag HDD's...

where I work, when a drive exhibits any SMART error, it gets replaced ASAP, this is due to the nature of the DATA they contain (Corporate Research)...




Ben
"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."
How to ask a question, when posting them to a professional forum.
Only ask questions with yes/no answers if you want "yes" or "no"

 

[goombawaho]

Toshiba has a link to this diagnostic utility but it launches as a Fujitsu tool since they have merged operations. However, I could NOT get it to SELECT my drive in order to test. Couldn't click on the drive in the little box even though it shows the drive in question is attached to the system. Very strange.

http://storage.toshiba.com/storage-services-support/warranty-support/software-utilities

I ran the SEATools long test and it offered no repair option. The short test simply said "smart has been tripped", kind of like "too bad pal" - no options to fix on either test. Meh, Toshiba.

 

[rclarke250]

BionicJohn, I don't understand, what does it being a boot drive or being in a laptop have to do with the diagnostics? Diagnostics are usually run from a boot disk, or a bootable thumb drive. Since almost all diagnostics are non destructive, I don't see where pulling the drive is going to give you a better result. I've used the Thermaltake Blacx Duo, and external cases to hook drives up to a running desktop also, just would like to know the reason why? You aren't running the diags from the questionable drive are you? In otherwords, I've never seen a drive that failed in the laptop, that passed once I tried it outside the machine , unless it was a motherboard issue, and not the drive that was the cause of the fault.

 

[BionicJohn]

Risk minimisation…

Iechyd da! John
Glannau Mersi, Lloegr.

 

[goombawaho]

I'd say that removing/moving the drive involves more risk than leaving it inside and booting from a diagnostic CD.