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I have a Hitachi HTS723232L9SA62 320Gb 7200RPM HDD. I checked the SMART status and there are 3 bad sectors, totaling 1.5MB. This means that approximately 0.00046875% of my hard drive has gone bad.

Is this a problem? How many bad sectors is too many bad sectors?

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For an old (MFF, RLL, IDE, ...) harddisk 3 bad sectors is nothing to worry about.

For a modern SATA disk (or SCSI or SAS) it is something to worry about. These remap bad sectors to spare sectors. If you have 3 bad sectors after the remapping then it is not just those three which are bad, but all the spare sectors have already been used.

So, 1) determine how many are bad according to the OS (e.g. windows can see those as bad sectors) and 2) How many are bad but succesfully remapped.

Three bad sectors in case 1 is bad.
Three bad sectors remapped an not visible to the OS is no problem (you have 100's more spares).


Having said that, do check the growth of bad sectors. If it stays stable at 3 then that is quite a different case from a growing number of bad sectors. If the number is growing then throw the disk away and install a new disk.

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  • The SMART status said that there were no pending remaps but 3 sectors had previously been remapped. This is case 1, right?
    – Albert Z.
    Jun 18, 2015 at 16:58
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    @AlbertZ. - If drive's firmware indicate no sectors have been remapped then you are fine, of course, its just a matter of time until that does happen.
    – Ramhound
    Jun 18, 2015 at 17:00
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From experience, 3 bad sectors is nothing to worry about. You should:

  1. Make sure everything is backed up
  2. Monitor your bad sectors over time. If that number grows over time, it could indicate a failing hard drive.
  3. Run chkdsk. These could be "soft" bad sectors (bad checksum) instead of "hard" bad sectors (physical damage of drive sectors) and can be repaired. If the sector is in your OS volume, this will require a reboot to run.

Otherwise, don't fret about 3 bad sectors unless it grows at a fair rate. It's like an unsightly mole and skin cancer.

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    a few is not a problem. what is a problem is when you notice 3 become 4 in just a month, or your SMART "Current Pending Sector Count" begins to rise. As bad blocks increase, they begin to grow approximately exponentially, so its not the number but the rate of growth that you should be concerned about. Keep an eye on your SMART stats for "REallocated Sector Count" and "Pending Sector Count" (pending sectors become reallocated sectors when you run chkdsk). when they start to rise, its time to start watching the disk very closely.
    – Frank Thomas
    Jun 18, 2015 at 16:52

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