Hi, I am seraching for help with my hard drive, possibly bad, thanks in advance!
I bought a samsung 1TB hard drive and it got a bit slow so I used the s.m.a.r.t. utility from speedfan and got this message, what does it mean?

-your hard disk has 647 pending sectors (this value is very large and your hard disk should be replaced). Those are sectors that couldn't be properly read and that the hard disk logic is waiting for a write operation to try to remap to a spare sector (if available). According to the Reallocated Sector Count attribute, your hard disk seems to have available spare sectors. A simple disk surface scan won't be enough to force the remap operation. You need a read/write surface scan to remap the sector. The best option should be a tool that knows about what should be read from that sector so that it has some option to apply the best fix to the missing data.

-your hard disk has 1 offline uncorrectable sectors. Those are sectors that an offline scanning found as unreadable. Offline scanning is a process that can be automatically started by the hard disk logic when a long enough idle period is detected or that can be forced by some tool. Those unreadable sectors are identified and the hard disk logic is waiting for a write command that will overwrite them to try to remap them to spare sectors (if available). According to the Reallocated Sector Count attribute, your hard disk seems to have available spare sectors. A simple disk surface scan won't be enough to force the remap operation. You need a read/write surface scan to remap the sector. The best option should be a tool that knows about what should be read from that sector so that it has some option to apply the best fix to the missing data.

One wierd thing is I have tried another s.m.a.r.t. utility (techtool pro) and also samsung's s.m.a.r.t. utility and they both say s.m.a.r.t. reports to be fine, so is speedfan lying?


I also used samsungs hard drive diagnose utility called ESTool and got various bad sectors, all said Error code AJ24, Bad sector


so, is my hard definitely bad? or can I save it?
thanks again

Run the command prompt (with administrator privileges in Vista) and input the following command:

chkdsk x: /f /r

where "x" is the drive letter you want to scan (start with c). It may tell you to restart before it can scan. If windows finds bad sectors it will attempt to move the data to another location. If it finds bad sectors, then your hard drive is (obviously) bad

thank you very much randomizer, am on xp, does it work the same? or if am not wrong I could right click the hard drive/properties/tools/check disk? if so should i check the boxes that say fix file system errors and the one that says Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors?
and if the the hard drive bad, since its less than a month old I should go the RMA way? am wondering if its the best way, not sure cause I just checked Samsung web page and they say they replace bad hard drives with refurbished hard drives, what are these “refurbished hard drives”?
thanks again, really appreciate it

almost forgot, when chkdsk fnishes does it give me a report or how does it work?
thanks again very much