SMART Reallocated Sector Count 269, Reallocated Event Count 20

wrote:
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Understood that the bad SMART readings may be due to external factors. The thing is, I've already migrated off of it to a 500GB Momentus XT hybrid SSD/spinning drive. So the questionable Toshiba HD is no longer in the computer and will not see much action. I did this out of fear instead of staying the course and continuing to use the Toshiba HD with constant monitoring of the SMART parameters. It is in an enclsoure, but in the long term, I'll be trying to keep the Toshiba HD tucked away (if not recycled) simply because I have a very tiny space (which is also the reason why I have this laptop as the sole computer in the apartment).

You mentioned in another thread that one could do conclusive testing. What kind of testing would be appropriately conclusive? Right now, I am thinking of the following (Toshiba does not provide it's own testing tools):

* Windows 7 Disk Check, http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2641432/en-us
* Hitachi Drive Fitness tool
* Seagate's SeaTools
* smartctl long self-test
(I'm only now discovering all the smartctl options!)

There is a hockey sock full of tools at http://pcsupport.about.com/od/toolso.../tophddiag.htm, but I'm thinking that one could spend a great deal of time trying out different tools unless one focuses on identifying the few well-trusted tools. Also, I'm not a big fan of going extreme and downloading a large number of things from a sight that I'm unfamiliar with, just from a cautionary perspective.

The tool is pretty irrelevant. All tools can do these days is
run short and long SMART selftets and report on the results and
on the SMART attributes. Of course, they try to distinguish themselves,
so they claim any number of things. The only exception is HDDSentinel
that tries to give you a realistic predicion on base of the
SMART attributes.

You mentioned HD Sentinel -- I think I can set up cygwin's smartctl server
to do this and email me, so the history will be stored in gmail, but I
have yet to fiddle with it (a long term project,considering other
competing priorities and the availability of manual testing). Since the

You can. But it is a pain.

questionable HD will not be connected to the computer in the long term,
however, I'm wondering if such a plan is appropriate. I can always use it
as a precautionary practice on the new Momentus XT; however, it's
partially SDD and regular scans/defrags are not recommended, so I'm
wondering if regular integrity tests are also not recommended.

They are. Attributes for SSD are different, but the HDD part is
very much subject to teh same failure modes as a normal HDD.
SMART selftests also do not write the drive and do not "formally"
read it (i.e. copy to SSD) so there is nothing there that would
endanger the SSD part.

Arno