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The S.M.A.R.T C5 value of my Samsung HM640JJ Hard Drive (in an HP Pavilion dv6 laptop) is "yellow status = caution"

C5 was 10 yesterday, and it's 21 today.

C4 (Reallocation Event Count) = 0 and 05 (Reallocated Sectors Count) = 0

How can I force the firmware to reallocate them?

  • I removed the partitions, recreated them again and formatted the entire drive.
  • I ran chkdsk /r /f
  • I ran the BIOS disk check utility and other diagnose/repair tools
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I use boot disk spinrite6 on level 2 to do this....grc.com/intro.htm – Moab Jan 30 at 23:03
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You need to use a tool that writes to every sector of the drive. Otherwise, there's no way to do it. If the drive allocated a spare sector and remapped, what data should it put in the spare sector? It has no idea, since its attempt to read from the existing sector failed. Only a write operation can clear the error.

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Formatting the entire hard drive is a write operation to every sector? I already formatted the drive (windows-based format command, no 'quick format'). Thanks – edgh Jan 31 at 0:29
A quick format is not a write operation to every sector, a regular format usually is. You can always use DBaN. Did the regular format at least reduce the count? – David Schwartz Jan 31 at 0:32
I did a regular format (not a quick format), I expected the count down or a remap after the format, but number was the same. Thanks – edgh Jan 31 at 0:40
That's very strange, actually. Was the partition you formatted the size of the entire drive? – David Schwartz Jan 31 at 0:41
@edgh: A regular format doesn't help when you have such an error. I suggest you try my method. – David Jan 31 at 1:07
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I had good experience with the method describe here http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/badblockhowto.html. My disk was making noise and stop working so I use smart report and the formula to calculate the bad block and use dd to clear it. I was lucky because smart is still reporting a current sector count but the disk is working since 2 years or so. I did bought a replacement but I've never used it. It seems to me that smart isn't that accurate either.

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I'll try that, thanks. – edgh Jan 31 at 1:19
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