Harddrive failing?

I turned on one of my pc's today and was greeted with a bios message. "Hard drive (model number) has failed smart check. Backup and replace. Press f2 to continue" Not wanting to lose about 400gb of data i did back it up to other drives straight away. Thing is i've ran tests on the harddrive with Seatools (failing drive is western digital but Seatools works on other brands and i already had it installed) and it passes every test accept the smart test.It's also working perfectly and fast in benchmarks. Is it really failing? Or is this gonna be one of them times where it will end up working fine for ages lol.

Edit. This is the drive thats failing. http://www.ebuyer.com/product/124228

Edited by deleted (Sun 28-Mar-10 10:37:29)

In reply to a post by blackmesa8:

it passes every test accept the smart test

Do you mean "except the smart test"? The drive says it's failing. It's failing, RMA it.

"Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology, or S.M.A.R.T. (sometimes written as SMART), is a monitoring system for computer hard disks to detect and report on various indicators of reliability, in the hope of anticipating failures.

When a failure is anticipated by S.M.A.R.T., the drive is typically replaced and returned to the manufacturer, who uses these dead drives to discover where faults lie and how to prevent them from reoccurring on the next generation of hard disk drives."

RMA it, drives inevitably fail and this one gave you a warning. Try marking the drive in a unique and non-obvious way so you can tell if they replaced it with a new one or just did some 'magic' on the old one and refurbished it back to you. Which can happen, but a replacement is obviously better (if it's actually new).

If your RMA is accepted, you will receive a drive that has been refurbished. The drive which you return will in turn be looked at, repaired and sent on to another RMA customer.

You are not going to receive a brand new unused drive.

Whenever I have RMA'd mine I usually get the replacement drive before I have to send the old one back, that way you use the box they send it in to send the old one back (probably manufacturer dependent).

It is a Western Digital drive and they will send you a drive before you RMA.
You have to pay up front which is refunded when RMA'd drive received.

I've used Western Digital drives for years, I've RMA'd 2 and have received a new drive on both occassions; as evidenced by year of manufacture label and firmware code.

Can't speak for other HDD manufacturers' practices.


[edit] typo

Edited by deleted (Mon 29-Mar-10 15:49:40)

I've been following this thread and have a question either out of curiosity or stupidity.

I have 3 external drives. If one fails it fails and I'll buy another. Are your drives guaranteed for life or something that you can send them back for replacement?

Or is it a special arrangement?

If they fail within the warranty period then they should be replaced, most fail outside of the warranty period so then you have to replace them at cost.

That's what I'd have thought. It's just that the thread, as far as I can see, has made no reference to drives being in or out of warranty.

The mention of RMA denotes that it was within warranty.

When you have a drive that is failing/failed you go to the support section of the website for your particular drive and then you can check whether you can get it replaced by entering the details required, this tells them whether it is still under warranty, if it is they give you an RMA [Return Merchandise Authorization] number and details of how to get a replacement, this can normally be done online (Maxtor/Seagate), but sometimes you have to phone the RMA number through to get your replacement.