During my monthly check I received a warning for Smart Health 197 current pending sector 16. Based off research I read to do a extended SMART test. While the test was running the current pending sector went to 24 and then 32. The extended SMART test completed without error. I attached the report from the test. Would you consider replacing this drive? Do not mind the UDMA CRC errors, they were from a bad cable when I installed the drive which has been corrected.

WDC_WD80EMAZ-00WJTA0_2SGA5U5J-20240702-1949.txt

early signs of a HD failure. 

 

MART 197: Current Pending Sector Count Count of “unstable” sectors (waiting to be remapped, because of unrecoverable read errors). If an unstable sector is subsequently read successfully, the sector is remapped and this value is decreased. Read errors on a sector will not remap the sector immediately (since the correct value cannot be read and so the value to remap is not known, and also it might become readable later); instead, the drive firmware remembers that the sector needs to be remapped, and will remap it the next time it’s written. However some drives will not immediately remap such sectors when written; instead the drive will first attempt to write to the problem sector and if the write operation is successful then the sector will be marked good (in this case, the “Reallocation Event Count” (0xC4) will not be increased). This is a serious shortcoming, for if such a drive contains marginal sectors that consistently fail only after some time has passed following a successful write operation, then the drive will never remap these problem sectors.

 

Usually it's the cable connecting the drive.

A recent SMART test complete, assuming it was made after the pending sectors, the disk is OK for now and they are false positives, still, not a good sign.

7 hours ago, bmartino1 said:

Usually it's the cable connecting the drive.

Pending sectors are an internal error in the drive and not anything to do with communication.

 

Anything more than zero is a cause for concern.