I have a 1,5 year old 2TB 20EARX drive that reported an uncorrectable sector count during a self test. The smart raw value is now at “1”. I performed a low level format and that didn’t show any damaged sectors and the drive performs fine for now. All the files that I copied befored formatting appear to be readable. Since the warranty is running out I’m wondering if this is enough to get the drive replaced or not. Thank you for your answers.
I don’t think WD will replace a drive based on uncorrectable sector count. What you should do is a couple of tests to see if there are bad sectors, and writing serroes to the drive often won’t show them up. What you’ll want to do is fill the drive up with data, or use a tool to write random patterns to the drive. Then do a long self test or use a tool to do a full surface test and look for current pending sectors or an increase in offline uncorrectable. If you had any pending sectors delete the data (don’t write zeroes, just a soft delete) and then full the drive up with data again. At that point if there are bad sectors you’ll see reallocated sector count has inceased.Ifyou get a reallocated sector it is enough for an RMA.
