today on a whim i ran hd tune pro to see if all was well in hard drive land

alas it was not
my main drive a 500 gig has thrown up an error or two
reallocation event count 608
and
reallocated sector count 608

in other words my hd has 608 bad blocks

some google fu later and the results are ...inconclusive

so my question is is my hard drive at risk or is 608 bad sectors are reasonable treshold ?

i wont actually lose anything if the drive dies on me other then my OS
all my files are installed on other drives
if anything it will just be an annoyance

im just wondering if i should risk it and how big the risk is
other wise ill remove the hd swap it out for a different hd and hook it up to my ps3 as a media drive where it can spin its gears untill it dies

only hd tune and hd sentinal so far scream bloody murder and that the drive is critical
the other 5 i unleashed on it ( easis activesmart barts stuff seatools and gsmartools ) seem indifferent about it or cant find anything

That sounds like a lot and if it has been getting worse recently, it may be a bad sign. Is this the first time you have checked the count?

yes
thats why i am asking about the treshold
is 608 bad blocks "normal" for a 500 gig hd or reason for moderate ( oh bother) panic ?

Generally speaking, it might not be so bad if that has accumulated slowly over time. You mention getting an error or two. Has that been occurring fairly often and more often recently? Do you often have power fluctuations where you live? If the computer often suddenly loses power, then a bad sector (which isn't necessarily bad) may have formed. If the drive was in the middle of a write and didn't finish, the drive may detect the discrepancy and call it a bad block.

I know there are some utilities which will deep scan your hard drive. They will write to the sectors in question and double check if they are really bad or not, possibly recovering the sectors and re-adding them to the "good" table. Unfortunately, I'm not currently familiar with which are currently good for this.

Check your other SMART variables, but I'd recommend backing up all essential files on another drive and prepare for replacement.

How old is the drive?

These days we get SMART warnings pretty early on so you have at least some warning of drive failure.

well the error i meant was in hd tune nowhere else
windows hasnt been giving me errors ( ive seen harddrive failures before windows to put it mildly has a hissy fit ) this is not the case here
just a report of 608 bad blocks

no power fluctuations everything is always on all the other smart variables check out fine
except the two read allocations errors that result in 608 bad blocks

the drive is about 18 months odl give or take its from june 2013

there is nothing on the hd itself other then my os and applications
all my files are on external hd's ...im a tad paranoid about these things

everything else seems to check out okay
all it stumbles over are those bad blocks

I'm using Hard Disk Sentinel Pro . Never heard HD Tune before .

thats one of the two that said that the drive was dying
hd tune pro and hd sentinal pro

active smart notes that there are 608 bad sectors but that thehd is otherwise performing fine

^This. Just in case.

quoting myself here


there is nothing on the hd itself other then my os and applications
all my files are on external hd's ...im a tad paranoid about these things ;p

i am tempted to couple my 40 gig ssd with a 160 gig hd
just for a laugh

Just to be sure follow these steps...

Step 1 - Strap your HD to a chair.
Step 2. - Say the phrase "Is it safe?"
Step 3. - Drill it's teeth.
Step 4. - Repeat as needed until it tells you what you need to know.

knowing my hd it will probably like that
all keyboards are finger fetishists for instance

Ugh.. 600 bad blocks.. but just reallocated or uncorrectable? For the last ones, probably even 2 are a bad sign..
Anyway, I suggest CristalDisk for constantly monitoring SMART status (and temperatures).