Hi!
After a long time, my Dell SATA II 2 TB HDD has started showing yellow on CrystalDisk.
The recommendation seems to be to get data out of it sooner than later and replace it.
My main usecase for it is as the main space where I install Windows programs and store Plex media. My C drive is SSD but much smaller. This HDD is D drive.
Seagate’s selling an 8 TB SSD for CAD$189 and a 2 TB one for CAD $101.
Question for you good folks -
- Anything I can do before I consider throwing money at this problem? Bad/Unrecoverable sectors seem to be at 100. But is there still a way I can get more life out of this drive? Or is it living it’s last breaths?
- What HDD should I go for? I’m optimizing for price and the use cases I mentioned above.
- If I do go the replacement route, what’s the best way for me to move drives? Should I clone the old to the new or copy files one by one? I do want to maintain the Program Files status of D drive. So I would be making the new drive as my D drive. Any FOSS tools for this transition?
Thanks!
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Mechanical hard drives are a one and done. When they fail that is it, do not pass go, do not collect $200. There is no repair. Replace the drive as fast as you can, because it may stop spinning up at any time with no warning. Once you have your data saved, bin it, don’t use it for anything else.
If you are waiting on a new drive try to make a backup of critical irreplacable data on literally any media, USB sticks, DVDs, Google drive. Game installs not so much, but documents, pictures, videos, etc. A failing drive WILL leave you stranded at the worst time. -
Ensure you are buying a CMR style hard drive. Basically there are two different methods of recording data on a magnetic platter. CMR is the traditional method and is fast but less dense (more $). SMR allows denser data and normal read speeds (good for media) but is extremely, extremely slow to write to, and will have bad performance for installed programs or general OS use. HDD manufacturers have sneakily replaced most of their lineups with SMR drives to increase profit margins (drive costs never dropped, big surprise) so you have to be careful which you buy as a general use drive. Any drive by Seagate or WD are going to be fine in this day and age. See which models are safe here:
https://www.seagate.com/products/cmr-smr-list/
https://nascompares.com/answer/list-of-wd-cmr-and-smr-hard-drives-hdd/
Buy more than you think, extra storage never hurt anyone. The price per gb drops precipitously between the 1tb to 6tb mark then levels off, so the best bang for buck drives typically are around 6-12tb these days. -
Yes as long as your new drive is same or larger capacity you should be able to plug in both drives and directly clone from the old to the new. Any Linux distro or live boot environment should allow you to do this via the
ddcommand- tons of tutorials on the Google.
I do recommend doing this from outside your windows install as windows will often deny access to program files actively in use, and the only way to ensure theres no issues is boot from an external OS and copy the drive bit by bit.
thank you for your detailed answer! Quick questions -
- Your links for the CMR list says Barracuda has 1 TB in CMR and others in SMR. So that would mean this one is definitely SMR, right? - ST2000LM015 - https://www.amazon.ca/Seagate-Barracuda-2-5-Inch-Internal-ST2000LM015/dp/B01LX13P71
- Funnily enough, an IronWolf 4 TB CMR is a tad cheaper than a Barracuda 2 TB SMR. Why would that be? - https://www.amazon.ca/Seagate-IronWolf-Internal-Hard-Drive/dp/B09NHV3CK9/142-0881699-7695956
- I reckon these drives won’t ship with external tooling so I could move data around… what’s my best bet to remove and clone? I have a MacBook Pro with a bunch of USB-C ports… Or would I be better off running a live distro of Linux on that Windows desktop and just using dd inside there?
I agree that more storage is better than less. I have an external drive that’s 14 TB and I couldn’t be happier with it!
Barracuda is Seagate’s basic value line so makes sense everything is SMR. Especially since you’re shopping for 2.5" laptop drives.
The ironwolf drives are more enterprise focused so they’re noisier, might be why it’s cheaper. But they’re a good option all around. (Frankly day to day hard drive prices are random anyway…)No they don’t typically come with any hardware to hook up, it’s assumed you plug it into your computer. However you can get USB to SATA adapters, with an external 12v power brick for mechanical drives, fairly cheap on amazon et al. I have one from U-Green that works fine and is also a USB hub and SD card reader. They’re great to have around just in case.
I have a U-Green SSD reader that I needed to test an SSD in the past. The drive was a bust but the tool was neat! I’ll go looking for the HDD version too. Does… it supply power too?
Those adapters supply 5v power from the USB port, but SATA adapters capable of running hard drives usually have an external 12v power brick, as most full size hard drives need 12v for the drive motor.
Now, that said, I think a lot of 2.5inch hard drives do use 5 volt only and might boot up fine from an SSD SATA adapter. It’s worth trying your existing adapter as is and seeing if it starts and recognizes the drive.
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The SMART table is not necessarily an accurate representation of the disk’s condition - I get a lot of disks that come through with a “GOOD” condition yet they’re on the brink of data loss.
Disks in a caution state should have replacement and data recovery prioritized.
The appropriate approach to data recovery will vary based on the condition of the disk.
A good place to start would be to download the free Victoria disk diagnostic software, run the “quick” surface scan, and post the result here. Note that any disk interaction / usage during the test will negatively bias the result.
As far as replacement is concerned, provision for whatever falls within your budget plus a second disk to use for periodic backups.
In Windows, I use two disks in a mirrored storage space to tolerate one disk failure, plus an offsite backup.
I ran the test and have attached a screenshot of the results here. Does this make sense to you? The “quick” scan took well over 3 hours! 😅
Update: I see the screenshot now. It seems I ran the full scan instead! Damn!
Yup, that’s the full scan. Your quick scan results were chill enough that it wasn’t necessarily a bad idea to scan further, I usually stop a scan after 5-10 dead sectors because I know I’ll be replacing the disk.
You’ve got 47 dead / completely unresponsive sectors and quite a few that are slower to respond. Overall, it’s good that you don’t have a ton beyond the 250ms range.
I should have asked, is this disk making any clicking / grinding / scraping noises?
Before proceeding, I would prioritize manual copy of any critical / irreplaceable data. You mentioned using this disk for Program Files - Program installers can usually be sourced and rerun, so I would consider that low priority.
When it comes time to clone the disk, those dead sectors might pose a problem with cloning software. I know that, by default, Macrium Reflect and Clonezilla stop the clone on unresponsive sectors. Both have options to override that, leaving behind bad data.
If the disk is not clicky / scrapey / grindy, you could run
chkdsk /r X:to have your filesystem adjusted and reallocate data away from problem areas before running a clone operation.Please note that continued operation of a failing disk yields continued degradation. In cases of active / rapid failure, running a long filesystem repair operation like chkdsk can actually work against you.
I use OpenSuperClone, a Linux based advanced cloning tool, for most failing disk cases that come through my shop. It’s probably overkill for the current condition of your disk and there’s going to be a learning curve if you choose to go that route, but the main advantage is that it grabs all the “easy” sectors before working on problem areas in order of increasing difficulty. I would have been recommending this route if you were to have had a high count of sectors taking longer than 500ms to respond (green / orange / red). That recommendation would have been accompanied by the disclaimer “if you can’t afford to lose this data, hire a professional”
Thank you so much for your deep analysis and help in reading these charts 😄 I have moved all my Plex content out of there and I’ll make a list of the Programs installed on there. There are some downloads and other folders, mostly related to software installs and experiments I’ve run over time, which I’ll have to catalog and hopefully move.
The disk isn’t making any clicking/grinding noises. At least, none that I can hear through the chassis.
As for the chkdsk command, seems like Victoria can also do that, but you would prefer the system tool?
Unfortunately, I do not have any option but to continue to use the disk for now. I’ll minimize the use, but it’ll take me a while to get a replacement disk. Hopefully it holds on till then!
I see you’re a professional. So thank you for all your time! The data on there isn’t the “can’t lose” variety, but I’ll get Teracopy on the task asap!
The quick result looks like this -
