Quick question, for anyone that can answer: After about how long does an average, run-of-the-mill laptop SATA HDD experience problems? (In specific, bad sectors.)

The reason I ask is my university laptop which I've owned for approximately 3¼ months (bought new) popped up with this lovely notice at uni today:

(Note: it's up to 2062 bad sectors now)

Again, I've owned it for 3¼ months and it feels a bit odd for it to happen so early in the laptop's life. It's still under warranty and I have not physically opened the laptop, so the warranty shouldn't be voided (unless disabling Windows' DRM in the BIOS and installing Ubuntu voids the warranty, in which case, god damn that's one bad warranty) so I'll be sending it back later this week.

Edited October 6, 201411 yr by EvilJackCarver

HDDs can fail at any time, especially on laptops (which tend to get thrown around more). Even something as simple as putting the computer in a bag before it actually goes to sleep can increase the risk of failure. 3 months is indeed very short for a drive lifetime, but if there was a manufacturing defect it could lead to that short lifetime.

Note that bad sectors don't necessarily mean a drive's failing: HDDs have extra sectors specifically so they can work around bad sectors, and can tolerate a certain number of bad sectors before there's a problem (unless you try to read from a sector which had data saved when it was good but then went bad, but that just corrupts that one file), because they can remap bad sectors onto other areas of the drive. Bad sectors increase risk of failure, but aren't themselves a critical failure right away until they pass some threshold. It's when they rapidly increase (like in your case) that it becomes a real sign of imminent failure -- a failing drive's condition worsens each time it's used (that's why the best response to the first sign of drive failure is honestly to just get a new drive immediately, because it'll only get worse).

Out of curiosity: Which SMART test showed failure on that screen? It'd say "Bad" or something under "Assessment" on failing tests.

cp702 is right, HDD's can fail at any time/

 

It doesn't look like your HDD is necessarily failing from what I can see, however you might want to think about purchasing a 240GB (Or really whatever size you need) Solid State Drive or SSD. SSD's use flash based memory, and do not have any moving parts. As an added bonus, they're up to 10 times the speed of a conventional HDD because of that. I'm only saying this in case you haven't heard of SSDs yet.

 

SSD's are pricey. But you could try cloning your HDD to a new SSD and replace the HDD. It will last longer, be more resistant to shock (Just don't drop your laptop), and be faster.

 

 

Thanks for the knowledge. I'll be sure to let the computer fully enter hibernate mode before I slide it in the bag in the future.

Bit of an addendum: Apparently Seagate HDDs are more failure-prone than Hitachi or Western Digital.^[1] My HDD is indeed a Seagate, so hopefully the replacement will be Hitachi.

 

Out of curiosity: Which SMART test showed failure on that screen? It'd say "Bad" or something under "Assessment" on failing tests.

The "Reallocated Sector Count" and the "Pending Sector Count", though at this point I can't even reinstall the OS on it (I was having issues immediately before when small [<1 meg] file transfers would hang, figured "backup > reformat > reinstall OS")

The full stats (multiple screenshots because I haven't bothered to attempt to splice them together) are in the spoiler.

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Sources:

1. https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-reliability-update-september-2014/

Edited October 6, 201411 yr by EvilJackCarver