Hey everyone, I need some help understanding what’s going on with my hard drive. A couple of days ago, my reallocated sector count was at 51 and marked as ‘caution.’ After keeping an eye on things, my computer started facing a ton of BSODs and BIOS warnings to replace the drive. Now, when I ran Crystal Disk Info, the reallocated sector count is down to 26 and marked as ‘bad,’ with a threshold of 36. Can anyone explain why this is happening?
Getting dump files would help us analyze the BSODs accurately. If you can get into Windows normally or through Safe Mode, could you check C:\Windows\Minidump for any dump files? If you find any, copy the folder to your desktop, zip it, and upload it to a file-sharing site. We like to have multiple dump files to work with, so if you only have one or none, upload what you have and follow a guide to change the dump type to Small Memory Dump.
With SMART data, the ‘current’ value isn’t the actual count. It’s more like a ‘badness’ scale from 100 (okay) to 0 (dead). When the ‘current’ value is less than the ‘threshold,’ it’s a warning. The real count of bad sectors is in the ‘raw’ column, which likely increased.
Thanks a lot for clearing this up! That makes more sense now.
So, does that mean my drive is still failing even though the number went down?
Unfortunately, yes. If the count is decreasing but marked as ‘bad,’ it indicates that the drive is likely failing. Best to back up your data and consider replacing it.
Is there any way to recover data from a drive that’s failing like this? I’m kind of worried about my files.
You might want to try data recovery software, but if the drive is really failing, it could be risky. Backing up whatever you can now is the safest bet.
This is a good reminder to keep backups. Drives can fail without much warning.