Reallocation Event Count Question - Hard Drive

[DaveLembke]

Checking the health of my laptop, I recently discovered that my Reallocation Event Count has a value of 22 hex ( 34 ) and the drive passed crystaldisk as healthy. I thought these events were a bad sign where sectors are reallocated when the event happens. Yet the reallocated sector count remains at 0. Looking on Google I couldn't find how this count would be greater than 0 with bad sector count at 0.

Was wondering what would cause 22 in hex  ( 34 events ) to happen, yet the drive is still determined to be healthy?

System is running healthy by the way!

 I just periodically check over hard drive health on systems I use that are important such as this one for college to be sure that all is healthy as for I have used systems before and when checking on a drives health find that the drive now has warnings on a different computer that a drive didnt pass S.M.A.R.T.

[Salmon Trout]

Do you have a data backup plan? If so, make sure your your backups are up to date. if you do not have a plan, why not? Monitor the value, if it increases, or odd things start to happen, replace the drive.

[Mark.]

I’ve found SMART data can be taken with a grain of salt.
Mind you I backup religiously as well anyway.


The trouble with SMART is there is no adhered to standard and each drive manufacturer handles the values, and triggers, differently.  Also, it only shows you what has happened - not when or how often which would be better indicators of a drive heading south.

[BC_Programmer]

"Reallocation Event count" counts when the drive started a "reallocation procedure". Since the reallocated sector count is zero, none were actually reallocated, so it would seem that 22 times the drive thought it had to reallocate a sector, but then either never finished it, or found the sector was fine and cancelled the remap.

It *could* mean there are problem sectors that are just on the brink of failing. Or it could possibly occur if the drive loses power suddenly while in-use.

[DaveLembke]

Thanks for everyones input on this. Not sure how the drive would ever have a power loss as for the laptop was always gracefully shut down. However there were a few times that I had to hold the power button to shut the laptop down when the original OS Windows 8 got messed up before downgrading to 7 64-bit Home Premium.

I create backups all the time of my most important data. On my ASUS Laptop I made use of the otherwise overlooked/unused SD Card Slot to have 64GB of backup storage space so it acts like a 2nd Drive. The SD Card stays in the slot all the time and when I am working on something critical of loss, I save a copy on the C: Drive as well as my 64GB SD Card at E: . I also save to USB thumb drives in addition to that so that if my system ever got hit with a virus and it takes out both the Hard drive and SD Card's data, I still have it on the USB stick. Additionally I have a 15GB Google Drive that I use as well for storage of data. I took a massive data loss about 22 years ago when a virus hit my system, and I didnt know that I had a virus until it spread to floppies and multiple systems, and have made backups of important data ever since to the point that sometimes I have data backed up in more than 3 locations. I use to burn CD-R and DVD-R's of important data prior to Google Drive being available for 15GB of free storage. But I still wont save any banking or tax data online and burn all that to Disc's that have control on who has access to that data as well as the discs are immune to alteration with all data read-only after burn.

I generally will fire up crystaldiskinfo and take a screenshot and save that on systems to look back at, but on this system those prior snapshots of the drives smart data were wiped out when i did a clean build of Windows 7 three months ago. I saved a screenshot of it and will continue to monitor it. I might have overlooked this field in past drive health checks as for I mainly look that its green and good and look at the stats of run hours and boots and reallocated sector count. The run hours of a hard drive is a good odometer of how many hours the computer has operated since new, as long as the drive hasnt been replaced.

[Geek-9pm]

For what it is worth...
For many years Hard Drive manufactures do not  make public there firmware code source. The firmware has propitiatory methods for read error management.

What the drive reports to the outside world may not represent the real state of the media. The is no law, regulation or anything to motivate them let others know what is going on. It can report 0 sectors relocated when there may have been fifty.

(This is not documented, b recuse it is not documented. )

If you have  reason to  suspect your drive is failing, stop using it.

[BC_Programmer]

The is no law, regulation or anything to motivate them let others know what is going on.

Correctly and accurately implementing S.M.A.R.T is part of implementing the ATA Command Set correctly, and the ATA Command Set must be implemented correctly in order to advertise a drive as a SATA drive or use the SATA logo.

[Geek-9pm]

Glad you agree with me. 

[BC_Programmer]

If an H.D.D manufacturer does not implement S.M.A.R.T in the specific way that is codified as part of the ACS, then it is not allowed to call itself a SATA drive. A drive needs to be certified to use the Logo, in particular; use of the logo without certification would result in legal action against the manufacturer by the SATA-IO.

It can report 0 sectors relocated when there may have been fifty.

Would Violate the S.M.A.R.T implementation guidelines of the SATA IO meaning that an HDD that does this would not be certified and would not be able to lawfully use the SATA logo on the product or to advertise the product in any way using that logo or as a SATA drive.

That there is no act of congress that directly codifies this into law doesn't imply, as you've suggested, that S.M.A.R.T implementations are anarchy in the United States. (Similarly, the lack of codification through the legal systems of other countries doesn't mean anarchy of SATA devices in those countries either)

This is not documented, because it is not documented.

It's "not documented" because you just made it up.

[patio]

It's "not documented" because you just made it up.

Quote of the Month Finalist...

[Geek-9pm]

Only for reference:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.M.A.R.T.
Do not read it. If you do, you will understand what I mean.

[skypuppy]

I recommend downloading "REDO" and installing it to a CD or DVD drive (can't remember if it actually fits on a CD or not.)  Boot from that disk and it will allow you to make a full image backup of your computer system to another device.  Just be sure you have enough space on the backup unit.  If your primary disk fails, you can recover to a new disk (of the same or larger capacity) and pick up right where you left off.  I do a full image backup once a week regardless.  I "should" do incrementals daily but I'm not that regimented. 
Be VERY careful of which drives you specify as backup/restore drives!!!