# Reallocated sectors warnings, what do they mean?



## flyingcow (Mar 24, 2014)

Hey guy i downloaded hwinfo and say a caution sign besides my HDD,
so i downloaded crystal disk info and say that it said , caution relocated sectors count : 8
and an error below says reallocated sectors count threshold 36, what does this mean is my hdd about to die?
Do i need to take a backup? (it has a lot of media and games)
does using Pc for torrents 24x7 cause much damage to HDD??

*i.imgur.com/sUwRbdf.png

Thanks


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## avichandana20000 (Mar 26, 2014)

Means ur HDD is going to be kaput in short future. Start taking the backups. For technical explanation GOOGLE it.


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## flyingcow (Mar 26, 2014)

thanks, i did my research because no one replied ...and then i found one answer on toms hardware saying that it was fine as the HDD had lived 12371 so it was fine and 6-7 reallocated sectors were fine, i have 11111 hrs so will it be fine?


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## ssdivisiongermany1933 (Mar 26, 2014)

I have 3 yrs old re allocated laptop  hard disk suriviving but I constantly take backup ... if u continue to use , pls  take back up regular
if hdd has warranty opt for a RMA


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## whitestar_999 (Mar 27, 2014)

every hdd has some spare free sectors outside of the usable size.with time(& other factors) some sectors of hdd go bad & then hdd replaces these bad sectors with spare good sectors.this whole process is invisible to OS & only indicated by S.M.A.R.T. values.as long as hdd has spare good sectors to replace bad ones you won't reach the threshold value.when threshold value is reached it means hdd has no more spare good sectors & after that any bad sector will not be replaced & data within it will be lost.

crystaldisk info by default show raw values in hexadecimal number system,to change into standard number system simply use function--advanced feature--raw values--10[DEC].after 9 hexa values start differing from usual decimal values(e.g.10 is A in hexadecimal).for ~11000 hours 8 reallocated sectors are not bad but from now on keep running crystaldisk info in the background all the time & keep an eye on this value.if it remains same for at least a week your hdd will most likely be ok but if the value keeps changing every 2-3 days or so then it means your hdd is slowly dying.in any case hdd can crash suddenly due to many other factors so always keep a backup of your important data in another hdd/dvd.

also do not RMA your drive unless your reallocated sectors value is constantly changing(or change it just before warranty ends) reason being it is better to have a hdd with small no. of reallocated sectors with 10000+ hours of usage than a new hdd with zero reallocated sectors & zero hours of usage('better the devil you know than the devil you don't').


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## flyingcow (Mar 27, 2014)

thanks for all the info guys, ill be sure to run crystal disk info, hope the numbers stay the same 
i am buying an ext HDD (1tb) to store all the data just to be safe.
also i noticed 3 bsods yesterday but it think that was due to faulty ram, as PC booted up fine when faulty ram was removed and occurred again when faulty ram was introduced
but one time windows didnt boot up, which scares me because i had removed the faulty RAM...and that is why im purchasing the HDD...

- - - Updated - - -

checked it now, its still on 000000000008, but will check for another week


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