Do western digital replace drives with reallocated sectors?

[d3v]

According to Crystal Disk Info my WD 640gb caviar black has developed 199 "reallocated sectors".

Will western digital replace my hard drive from this SMART report or will they run their own diagnostics and declare it error free and working just fine?

 

[emsbronco]

Run the Western Digital Diagnostic tool. If it gives you a fault code, submit it for RMA.

 

[wimwauters]

Also bear in mind your RMA unit might be a 'reworked' or 'repaired' hard disk (for example with a head or platter turned off).

It might be more productive to replace a failed hard disk (or one with recent new bad sectors), with a brand new one.

 

[d3v]

Really? Do WD send out replacment drives that are second hand??

Both the quick and long health tests using WD Lifeguard software reported no faults.

Will they still replace the drive based on the crystaldiskinfo report?

 

[emsbronco]

All of the manufacturers send out factory refurbished drives. You will NOT get a new drive back when you send one in for RMA.

What I do like about WD is that on occasion, they will send back a better drive model than what I sent in. Out of the last 5 drives I sent to WD, I had 2 that were "upgraded" - 1 was a 250 sata that they replaced with a 320 sata and the other was a 500 sata that was replaced with a 500 sata 6gb/s model.
Seagate always replaces witht he same exact model and size.

If the WD diagnostics do not show a failure, then I would be hesitant to send it in. I don't remember whether it was WD or Seagate, but one of them had some fine print that basically said any drive sent in that was not failing could be returned to you and you may be charged return shipping. But, if the drive is starting to fail, then I would back up the data and then exercise the drive (defraggler full defrag option or Vivard with remap is good for this) and see if the reallocated sector count increases.

 

[d3v]

HI, thanks for the insightful information.
I've used UltimateDefrag for the past 5 or so years and personally think no other defrag software comes close to the thoroughness, customizability and sheer noticeable speed increase that UltimateDefrag gives, and the ability to place you're favorate gams' installation folders on to the outer tracks of your hard drive is just plain genius, and really does smooth out game performance.

I used to use defraggler, but this Vivard defragger seems to be a bootdisk for low-level hard drive formatting. I can't find a Vivard defragger!! Should I notice a reduction is reallocated sectors after defragging?

 

[emsbronco]

Vivard is a dos based tool to scan for bad sectors and force a remap. I use the remap feature when I see SMART showing pending sectors. It is included in UBCD.

Any defrag process puts the drive under a lot of stress, so use any defragger you prefer and check SMART values after the process is done to see if any of the error counts have increased. If they have, then the drive is failing, but if the error counts do not change, then the drive is probably OK.

Remember, bad sectors are common and the drive manufacturers have built in routines to reallocate (or remap) the bad sectors to a reserve sector. So, a small number here is OK, if the count does not increase regularly.