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Storage Drive Gone Bad - Ran a HEALTH check on my external drive with HD Tune Pro and REALLOCATED SECTOR COUNT is 4948. Need some advice

I feel like this question doesn't belong in SuperUser, but I can't seem to figure out what's wrong.

  1. Title surely can have some improvement, although I'm not sure what to change it into.
  2. It looks like have two questions, but I'm not sure if it's different enough to warrant this to be two posts.

Is this question on-topic here?

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  • You could argue it's asking for an opinion.. Only current answer is giving that (an IMO incorrect opinion).
    – user705502
    Commented Mar 12 at 21:21
  • Interpreting meaningful guidance from SMART stats (before its too late), inherently requires a degree of "educated/expert opinion", much like you might get from your doctor when you ask "why does it hurt when i do this?". Unfourtunately, we can't just say "get an MRI". while the ops question can be understood as "can I keep using this disk?", you can also model it as "what should I do?", which is basically the only motivation anyone has for posting questions.
    – Frank Thomas
    Commented Mar 14 at 5:02
  • I see nothing to justify the deletion or migration of that question considering it is within scope.
    – Ramhound
    Commented Mar 14 at 15:55

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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I think the core of the question is "can I keep using this drive?", and the rest of the question is really background information. While it could use some polish, or even be replaced by a canonical question, I don't see anything fundamentally wrong with it.

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  • part of the problem is that there can't be a canonical answer due to the mechanical/analog nature of the device itself. SMART stats are indicators, but are not conclusive for most diagnostic purposes. in particular reallocated sector count as a single snapshot in time, absent any other alarming SMART stats, is not conclusively bad, but also may as likely indicate a critical failure in the near term.
    – Frank Thomas
    Commented Mar 14 at 4:40
  • What's 'bad' is probably a useful starting point as would discussing what various stats of interest practically are
    – Journeyman Geek Mod
    Commented Mar 14 at 4:46

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