Question regarding SMART warning on WD30EZRX

Hello!

A few days ago I thought it would be a good idea to check the status of my HDD’s, so I installed HD Tune and shockingly one of my drives (WD30EZRX) reported a SMART warning.
The warning was coming from the Current Pending Sector (C5), which had a value of 1 in the data column.

So I googled a little bit about it and I read that it might be a good idea to install the WD Diagnostics tool and run the extended test. When I opened WD Diagnostics however, I noticed it said PASS next to the HDD in question. All values seemed to be good, but I thought it would be a good idea to run the extended test anyway and see what would happen.
After finishing the test, it said it completed the test successfully. HD Tune still reported the warning though and WD Diagnostics tool still says PASS.

Next up, I installed CrystalDiskInfo and Speccy. Speccy reported that the HDD is in good health, while CrystalDiskInfo gave a warning for Current Pending Sector (C5) and additionally Uncorrectable Sector Count (C6) with a value of 1. I also noticed that Write Error Rate (C8) has a value of 1, but is not marked as a warning in any program. I do have a feeling it might be related to the C5 and C6 warnings though. I had a few power outages the last few days, so maybe it just screwed up somewhere?

Anyhow, I tried a few solutions to solve the problem:

  1. Run chkdsk /f /r - No errors found, everything was fine

  2. Run HD Tune Error Check - No errors found, in both the long and quick version

  3. Backup the drive and run a zero format using the WD Diagnostics tool - this is about 2 days later from the initial check, since all the tests take about 6 hours to complete…

The last option did solve the C5 error. The value is 0 again and both HD Tune and CrystalDiskInfo report it as OK. Also no sectors had to be remapped, since the reallocated sectors count is still 0. Which should have been 1 (from what understand), if something had been wrong with the pending sector.

Now for the current problem, I kind of expected the zero format to also solve the C6 warning in CrystalDiskInfo (all other programs report the disk as healthy now). It didn’t however, as the value is still 1 and marked as “caution”. Should I worry about this? Is there any way to also fix this value? Currently I’m running another extended test, but I doubt it will do anything.

Here is a screenshot of the current SMART status in CrystalDiskInfo:

 Hi there and welcome to the WD community.

If the Drive show that it is passing the S.M.A.R.T test on DLG it should mean that the unit does not have problems, although this software you are using has this caution message. I would like to know if the drive is giving errors or not performing correctly. Lets see if there is another user that can help out with some tips and information on this matter.

AIUI, before the drive reallocates a pending sector, it first retests it by writing new data to it. If the test passes, then the sector is returned to service. The reason is that the sector may have been written slightly off-track during a shock event, or when the temperature was high, or perhaps the heads were flying too high at the time.

I wouldn’t be too concerned with this error. Just keep an eye on the raw attribute values. If they start to increase, then that would be cause for concern.

As for C6, it may be that the raw value is a historical count, in which case it may never be cleared. Alternatively, if it is a rolling average, then it will be cleared if conditions improve.

@ArMak: Thanks! The HDD has not given me any trouble as of yet. It passes all tests and the “bad” SMART are not increasing (thankfully). As I mentioned, I just randomly checked my HDD’s SMART status and noticed the warning. When I googled for more information about the warning, I only found one guy who had the exact same problem as I did. His problem was solved by running the extended test, but that didn’t do anything for me.

After the zero format the C5 warning went away, but the C6 warning remained - that is why I figured it would be a good idea to ask about here on the WD forum :slight_smile:

@fzabkar: Yeah I read about that while I was waiting for the tests to complete. A zero format should force the HDD to retest pending sectors, which it did in my case. The C5 error is now gone.

I’m happy with your reply on the C6 warning though! Gives me some peace of mind. What would determine if it is a historical count or a rolling average, though? The firmware?

HDD manufacturers don’t provide information regarding their SMART attributes to the general public. In fact even their own tech support staff appear not to be privy to it. Any information that is “out there” appears to have been deduced from experimentation and observation.

Worse still, SMART attributes are not standardised, so each manufacturer is free to define their SMART attributes in their own proprietary way. In fact the meaning of these attributes often changes between models from the same manufacturer, and can even vary between firmware versions for the same model.

In short, the meaning of the raw values is determined by the firmware according to a spec that only the comppany’s firmware programmers appear to have access to. If you ask WD’s Tech Support, they will most probably direct you to Wikipedia.

I would watch C6. If the raw value drops to zero at some time in the future, or if it increases and then subsequently decreases, then this would suggest that it is computed from a rolling average.

1 Like

fzabkar wrote:
HDD manufacturers don’t provide information regarding their SMART attributes to the general public. In fact even their own tech support staff appear not to be privy to it. Any information that is “out there” appears to have been deduced from experimentation and observation.

Worse still, SMART attributes are not standardised, so each manufacturer is free to define their SMART attributes in their own proprietary way. In fact the meaning of these attributes often changes between models from the same manufacturer, and can even vary between firmware versions for the same model.

In short, the meaning of the raw values is determined by the firmware according to a spec that only the comppany’s firmware programmers appear to have access to. If you ask WD’s Tech Support, they will most probably direct you to Wikipedia.

I would watch C6. If the raw value drops to zero at some time in the future, or if it increases and then subsequently decreases, then this would suggest that it is computed from a rolling average.

What is a rolling avarage?

Let’s say we have recorded the following results over a period of 9 days.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 (days)
0 0 0 1 9 5 0 0 0 (results)

If we compute a rolling average (aka “moving average”) over the last 3 results, then we have …

day 1: 0 / 3 = 0
day 2: (0 + 0) / 3 = 0
day 3: (0 + 0 + 0) / 3 = 0
day 4: (0 + 0 + 1) / 3 = 0.33
day 5: (0 + 1 + 9) / 3 = 3.3
day 6: (1 + 9 + 5) / 3 = 5
day 7: (9 + 5 + 0) / 3 = 5.3
day 8: (5 + 0 + 0) / 3 = 1.67
day 9: (0 + 0 + 0) / 3 = 0