PC Doctor 5 Hard Drive Test

[jdhurst]

I installed PC Doctor 5 on my NetVista A30 desktop (uninstalling the old version first) to check it out.

It ran fine with the exception of the main hard drive. The main hard drive is a Maxtor 6Y080P0 80Gb hard drive that has been running as Drive D: in the machine for years. I recently installed the 80Gb drive as Drive C:, reinstalled Windows XP Pro, and added a Maxtor 6L100P0 as Drive D:

All is well.

Now when I run the PC Doctor basic tests, it fails on drive C: (the 80Gb drive). It says:
Smart Status Test: Failed (Error Message Failure prediction threshold exceeded)
Smart Short Self Test: Cannot Run (The SMART self test operation timed out)

The Seek test for Drive C: works and all the tests for Drive D: (the 100Gb drive) work fine.

What might the problem be with Drive C: ?
Thanks, ... JD Hurst

[christopher_wolf]

Did you check the SMART attributes with HDTune?

If there is a problem that PCD5 can pick up by checking SMART attributes, then HDTune should pick it up too.

[jdhurst]

I found HD Tune after your post and ran it. It says:
(05) Reallocated Sector Count: Failed
(CB) Unknown Attribute: Failed
All others passed.

The 100Gb drive gives no errors.

I went to the Maxtor site and look for firmware but there is none. Maybe the drive has a problem which is relatively unimportant. It works fine in every other respect.

Thanks, .. JD Hurst

[christopher_wolf]

I have seen reports like that on systems before, except different tests randomly fail. In general, it really doesn't indicate anything is about to fail with the drive or that it is in critical conditions. Never saw anything bad happen because of it on those, some moderately older, systems.

When the SMART attributes start treeing red or out-of-threshold, then that is a better sign the drive is near EOL.