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Raw Read Error Rate failure

Mav
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Raw Read Error Rate failure

My daughter has been having a few issues with her HP Laptop over the last couple of weeks and I was suspecting a hard drive error.
The laptop was regularly freezing as well as issues playing videos. No virii or other maleware, etc found and over 600GB free from 1TB space. I haven't checked the page file yet.
I ran some disc checks:
Initially Seagate's Seatools for Windows Short test showed no issues but it got stuck early on in the Long Test. A further Long Test today completed without issue.
Belarc Advisor reports SMART status as healthy.
Western Digital's Date Lifeguard reports a failed SMART status (See Screen-shot 1) but passed the Long test.
A Google search seems to indicate that a Raw Read Error Rate failure is not necessarily indicative of a failing hard drive.
So now I am thinking that it may not be a hard drive problem.
Any one care to comment?

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11 REPLIES 11
VileReynard
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Re: Raw Read Error Rate failure

Modern Grin disks are designed to perform at the absolute limits of achievable performance.
So there is a huge amount of error correction and error detection encoded into the datastream - just like DVD's etc.
This is why the raw data rate is meaningless.
There may be successful re-reads taking place - which would seriously interfere with video playback.
Getting a lot of reallocated sectors is generally a BAD thing!
I would make sure that you take frequent backups of anything important.

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ReedRichards
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Re: Raw Read Error Rate failure

Hard disk manufacturers have a vested interest in not declaring their drives to be faulty.  I don't have much faith in the tools they provide.
Press F8 repeatedly on start-up and choose the 'Repair my computer' option.  Then choose the Advance tools option and open a CMD window.  Change to the C: drive and check that is the Windows drive.  Once you have found the Windows drive run chkdsk /b .  If you have more than a couple of bad sectors then the drive is likely to be on the way out.  If the checking runs very slowly at some point then the drive is probably faulty.  Modern hard drive can develop areas of the disk which become very difficult to read but the computer keeps on trying until everything else gets queued and the computer grinds to a halt.  The grinding to a halt is characteristic of this type of hard drive problem and you come to recognise it after seeing it a few times. 
picbits
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Re: Raw Read Error Rate failure

Every modern Seagate drive I've used has had astronomical amounts of raw read error rates in their SMART status.
Not sure why and the WD and old Samsung drives have next to none.
ejs
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Re: Raw Read Error Rate failure

ValueWorstWarn
Raw Read Error Rate754762
Airflow temperature684545

The "normalised" values are like percentages, with 100 being the best and 0 the worst. The raw values, like reallocated sector count, generally increase as things get worse, but the normalised figures go down as things get worse. Those figures show that the raw read error rate has been worse than the threshold (warn column), but isn't currently. The worst temperature value also shows that the drive has been at its maximum temperature before.
Mav
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Re: Raw Read Error Rate failure

Have met a major issue after attempting to run chkdsk on my daughter's laptop.
First of all it seems that F8 doesn't work on W8 machines so a Google search showed how to access Safe Mode by accessing the CMD window then entering the command 'shutdown /r /o /f /t 00'. Through Troubleshooting you eventually you get a set of options including Enable Safe Mode with Command Prompt which we selected.
We then entered the chkdsk /b command as suggested by RR and was met with something like: "Cannot run this command as drive in use. Do you want it to run next time you boot". We selected Y and the only way to reboot at this stage seemed to be power down. We were then met with the same message. We powered down again but on start-up we were met with a black screen with the mouse pointer. Further reading seems to indicate this is an error with the 8.1 installation and needs use of the recovery disc which my daughter never made and we don't have any other W8 (.1) machine in which to create one.
Does anyone have any further suggestions, please?
Edit: Panic over for now Wink
It appears that my daughtr didn't tell me all options available when I suggested she press CTRL-Alt-Del (she's at her house I am at mine). She tried again and this time selected Shutdown and then powered up. chkdsk is now running.

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Mav
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Re: Raw Read Error Rate failure

It seems to be stuck at 10% for the last almost hour. Long time since I did a chkdsk - how long should I give it?

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VileReynard
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Re: Raw Read Error Rate failure

You shouldn't have run chkdsk - it is going to strain a flakey disk.
You should have cloned your disk to a "good" disk.
This would allow you to try to recover the dodgy disk.
At least take a backup first!
I would give up and go back to normal operation - if you can. Tongue

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Mav
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Re: Raw Read Error Rate failure

Actually, I'd forgotten about it till my daughter rang me to say it was still at 10% after 3 hours. Anyway, told her to cancel it which would only happen with a CTRL-Alt-Del apparently.
It kept looping back to the CHKDSK attempting to re-run. Eventually I convinced her to go for Advanced Options being offered and she got her desktop back.
She will get the laptop to me tomorrow and I will run other diagnostics outside Windows environment. If the disc is failing then I'll get back to PC world under the guarantee as it is still less than a year old.

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VileReynard
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Re: Raw Read Error Rate failure

Take a backup first!!!
PC World will wipe the disk as part of their "diagnostics".

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ReedRichards
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Re: Raw Read Error Rate failure

Quote from: Mav
She will get the laptop to me tomorrow and I will run other diagnostics outside Windows environment. If the disc is failing then I'll get back to PC world under the guarantee as it is still less than a year old.

If you run chdsk and it sticks for 3 hours at some point then the hard disk is failing beyond a shadow of a doubt.  But Jeremy is right, PC World will reset it to its factory state (or try to) so all your stored data will be lost.
Mav
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Re: Raw Read Error Rate failure

Thanks for all the tips/advice.
Got an early call from my daughter this morning (why can she never wait till a reasonable time! ;)) telling me that Windows was now reporting that a hard drive failure is imminent.
Got in touch with PCWorld KnowHow and they will collect the laptop on Wednesday and, hopefully, return it the following Wednesday. She has already backed up everything to an external drive I gave her some time ago. I also made a note of the HDD serial number to make sure that they don't return the laptop with the old one still in place - don't really trust PCWorld et al.

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