dichotomy between failing drive opinion and 'format it'

I have a Hitachi Travelstar 120 gig drive which is a year old. It
started giving error messages saying that the media could not be found
but then tested OK on the DFT

Suddenly it failed yesterday and gives error code 0x70 with a TRC
7000SAEFF

Hitachi says this means bad sectors and that it WILL respond in any
event to a (destructive) format.

It gave this error code when I tried to repair the sectors and lose
the info on them. They also say don't worry about it as the sector
format will get rid of the problem. (as opposed to replacing them with
spare ones??) and it has a 3 year warranty, which did in fact make me
feel better if they are prepared to warranty their product for 3 years
after this has occurred.

Is this a failing drive or is it just one needing formatting please?

Previously wrote:
I have a Hitachi Travelstar 120 gig drive which is a year old. It
started giving error messages saying that the media could not be found
but then tested OK on the DFT

Suddenly it failed yesterday and gives error code 0x70 with a TRC
7000SAEFF

Hitachi says this means bad sectors and that it WILL respond in any
event to a (destructive) format.

Not necessarily. It could just map them out and then continue
to get more unreadable ones.

It gave this error code when I tried to repair the sectors and lose
the info on them. They also say don't worry about it as the sector
format will get rid of the problem. (as opposed to replacing them with
spare ones??)

No. The drive knows the secors have problems. They will be re-tested
and reallocated if needed. This makes sense, as not all unreadables
are due to a surface problem.

and it has a 3 year warranty, which did in fact make me
feel better if they are prepared to warranty their product for 3 years
after this has occurred.

That is pretty meaningless. The idea is that after about 2 years
or so, it is not worthwhile replacing a disk, due to shippong costs.
At least my experience is that you have to pay one direction yourself.
I also had to pay customs fees and an outrageous fee by UPS on my
last replacement. The result is that I fo not RMA drives anymore,
but stop buying brands that fail me.

Is this a failing drive or is it just one needing formatting please?

Depens on the number of bad sectors and on whether it keeps
increasing. Please post the full (including raw) SMART data here.

Arno

On Nov 3, 11:34*pm, Arno Wagner wrote:
Previously wrote:
I have a Hitachi Travelstar 120 gig drive which is a year old. It
started giving error messages saying that the media could not be found
but then tested OK on the DFT
Suddenly it failed yesterday and gives error code 0x70 with a TRC
7000SAEFF
Hitachi says this means bad sectors and that it WILL respond in any
event to a (destructive) format.

Not necessarily. It could just map them out and then continue
to get more unreadable ones.

It gave this error code when I tried to repair the sectors and lose
the info on them. *They also say don't worry about it as the sector
format will get rid of the problem. (as opposed to replacing them with
spare ones??)

No. The drive knows the secors have problems. They will be re-tested
and reallocated if needed. This makes sense, as not all unreadables
are due to a surface problem.

and it has a 3 year warranty, which did in fact make me
feel better if they are prepared to warranty their product for 3 years
after this has occurred.

That is pretty meaningless. The idea is that after about 2 years
or so, it is not worthwhile replacing a disk, due to shippong costs.
At least my experience is that you have to pay one direction yourself.
I also had to pay customs fees and an outrageous fee by UPS on my
last replacement. The result is that I fo not RMA drives anymore,
but stop buying brands that fail me.

Is this a failing drive or is it just one needing formatting please?

Depens on the number of bad sectors and on whether it keeps
increasing. Please post the full (including raw) SMART data here.

Arno

That is what I was wondering: how I can access this data. Does it keep
a log of the SMART data somewhere or how can I access it? And as I
will be having to do their erase format anyway, should I do this
before or after? Is the idea to run some program in UBCD4WIN after
the erase to see the actual condition of the drive?

Previously wrote:
On Nov 3, 11:34*pm, Arno Wagner wrote:
Previously wrote:
I have a Hitachi Travelstar 120 gig drive which is a year old. It
started giving error messages saying that the media could not be found
but then tested OK on the DFT
Suddenly it failed yesterday and gives error code 0x70 with a TRC
7000SAEFF
Hitachi says this means bad sectors and that it WILL respond in any
event to a (destructive) format.

Not necessarily. It could just map them out and then continue
to get more unreadable ones.

It gave this error code when I tried to repair the sectors and lose
the info on them. *They also say don't worry about it as the sector
format will get rid of the problem. (as opposed to replacing them with
spare ones??)

No. The drive knows the secors have problems. They will be re-tested
and reallocated if needed. This makes sense, as not all unreadables
are due to a surface problem.

and it has a 3 year warranty, which did in fact make me
feel better if they are prepared to warranty their product for 3 years
after this has occurred.

That is pretty meaningless. The idea is that after about 2 years
or so, it is not worthwhile replacing a disk, due to shippong costs.
At least my experience is that you have to pay one direction yourself.
I also had to pay customs fees and an outrageous fee by UPS on my
last replacement. The result is that I fo not RMA drives anymore,
but stop buying brands that fail me.

Is this a failing drive or is it just one needing formatting please?

Depens on the number of bad sectors and on whether it keeps
increasing. Please post the full (including raw) SMART data here.

Arno

That is what I was wondering: how I can access this data. Does it keep
a log of the SMART data somewhere or how can I access it? And as I
will be having to do their erase format anyway, should I do this
before or after? Is the idea to run some program in UBCD4WIN after
the erase to see the actual condition of the drive?

The attributes are stored on the disk. You run a SMART tool
and query them. I use the free smartmontools (commandline,
Linux and Win). Everest is another choice. You can also use
speedfan, but then have to put screenshots somewhere, as it
does not exprt to text. Ideally, you get the attributes before
and after the disk overwrite.

Arno