Is this PC doa? (was a formatting question)

[Mark]

On Mon, Nov 15, 2010 at 9:07 PM, Basil Chupin <blchupin at iinet.net.au> wrote:
>
:
> When a failure is anticipated by S.M.A.R.T., the drive is typically
> replaced and returned to the manufacturer, who uses these failed drives
> to discover where faults lie and how to prevent them from recurring on
> the next generation of hard disk drives.
>
> There lies the tale. Your HD(s) are failing.
>
Probably yes, maybe no.

I just replaced a Seagate HD after more than two years of getting a
message from the SMART firmware every 30 minutes without missing a
single one, telling me that there were 2147483647 unrecoverable hard
errors.  When I first noticed this I was alarmed until I realized that
this is decimal for 0x7fffff, the likelihood of accuracy being about
that to 1 against.  I obtained Seagate's seatools and verified that
the disk was in fact just fine.

Now, this does *not* mean your drive is healthy.  I would get a second
opinion before ditching it, and quickly in case it is going bad.