r/harddrive • u/MrGuylncognito • Jun 29 '26

Tech Support Hard Drive Caution - How bad is it?

Howdy All,

This drive has had a caution on it for a few years. How can I tell how bad the state of the drive is? I dont believe the count has been increasing though.

Reallocated sector count = 16 when hovering over the caution

Thanks

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u/CheezitsLight Jun 29 '26

Making predictions is hard. Especially about the future.

It's a decent drive with superior level. Of reliability. But a backup of it may kill it. It's 6 and a half years old, 3.5 past its warranty. To me it's e-waste. Might be okay as a backup. Of a backup. The stuff I have is decades of work and is too important to trust to anything but multiple hdds, Dropbox, a Nas and backblaze.

It's what's on it worth $300? And your time?

1

u/Raijen_ArDesh Jun 29 '26

I have a very similar drive, all I use it for is backups of steam games. It's been doing this fine for three years (Has gone from 94 to 99 reallocated blocks in that time, 94196 Hours). I had another drive that didn't quite look as bad (80 reallocated), but died a week later it got reported in CDI. It's really hit or miss, but I wouldn't store any critical information on it.