21% Health New External

[vairox]

I ran HDS on my 3TB Seagate GoFlex and this is what it reports. It says 21% health based on 344 bad sectors. The temperature is higher right now because I am currently running a surface test to verify that it has that many bad sectors. Should I have this drive replaced?

[hdsentinel]

Thanks for your message.

The "bad sectors" reported in the text description are no longer used by the hard disk. Instead, a spare area is used for all reads and writes targeting those bad sectors. This means that disk surface tests (even the tests in Hard Disk Sentinel) does not access those sectors, but tests the remaining data area and the spare area.

By these tests, you can verify if the currently used data area is error-free, there are no further errors reported (no weak, damaged sectors, no further problems).

If this is true and the tests show only green blocks, it means the drive is now stable and can be used.

However, because of the lower health level, I'd recommend to use it only for secondary storage, not for sensitive, important data.

For more information about bad sectors and further steps, please click on the "?" next to the text description. Also the following pages may help:

http://www.hdsentinel.com/faq.php#health and
http://www.hdsentinel.com/faq.php#tests
http://www.hdsentinel.com/faq_repair_ha ... _drive.php

Also if you prefer, you may use Report menu Send test report to developer option. This way it is possible to can check the complete status of the drive and may give advice about the current values, especially if the test(s) show further problems so the health and the reported problems change.

[vairox]

It's now at 368 bad sectors, seems to me it's getting worse and should be replaced.

[hdsentinel]

Yes, I'm afraid if the number of bad sectors still increase, I'd also recommend to consider replacement before data loss occur.