Calibration Retry Count

So I just installed HD Tune to check out my external hardrive as it's having some issues and by default it loaded my internal drive first and I noticed the warning coming up. Normally if it was a very low number I wouldn't be too concerned but its saying It's had 34 attempts after a calibration failure and this computer is only less than 6 months old. What should I do? It is my primary and only drive in my Laptop at the moment, still under warranty.

 

The defecation is about to hit the oscillation. I'd say start backing up and be prepared to send it back to repairs.

 

What is the error exactly?

 

I wouldn't trust HDTune alone. I would run the tool from your HDD manufacturer:

SAMSUNG Hard Disk Drive - support - utilities

And see what it reports. It can run much more in-depth tests and scans on your HDD than HDTune can.

 

Is there a 64bit copy? It's saying it's not compatible.

 

Look at my Samsung HM640JJ.

It's laughtastic.

(And yes, it's been working perfectly despite this).

 

Wow! I don't know what you've done but that looks nasty.
I still want to know what this calibration retry count is and why its occurred then I may have a better understanding of how serious it is, but from looking at your HD Tune, I don't know what to think

 

The Calibration retry count is the number of times it's had to recalibrate itself to aligning the heads with the tracks so it can read data appropriately. This might mean that the seek arm is sticking, or that there's something else mechanical that's making it difficult for the heads to find the proper tracks. Forge's values are a little weird, note how some of them are negative.

 

I just wanted to show that HDTune isn't the end-all be-all of HDD diagnostics. CrystalDiskInfo gives me a clean bill of health, and both the HDDTune error scan and Win7 HDD scan come up clean, too.

Maybe HDDTune doesn't like Samsung?

 

That's possible. I've never actually used HDTune, myself.

 

In HD Tune if you click update on the health page multiple times it comes up with some real funky numbers.

 

Just installed and ran CrystalDiskInfo, which gave me a good heads up that the drive is in 'Good' Health Status, I guess you guys were right in saying HD Tune may not be all that accurate, with that being said, I'll take it's word in regards to my WD Elements, this thing is just death in a case. I'm going to get it RMA'd as soon as I can, not that it matters considering I can't do anything with it

 

Not sure on the Samsung software and 64bit compatibility. You can try forcing the exe to run in compatibility mode. In the properties choose the Windows XP compatibility mode and see if that works for you.

If that doesn't work, I'd download Seatools or Western Digital Data Lifegaurd and try scanning with those. They both have long tests you can run on the HDD that will detect problems. I personally prefer Seatools as it has more test you can run, but both should detect any problems with the drive.

 

The only thing that's accurate in that chart is probably the Bad Sector count(seems like a lot of Samsung drives get reallocated bad sectors). I would ignore the other ones.

 

Compatibility issues still with the Samsung program.
Installed Seatools -
S.M.A.R.T Test: Passed
Short DST: Passed
Long DST: Passed

Any more tests on the program you recommend me undertaking?

Also ran 'chkdsk' in CMD and the results were simple, all three stages reported no bad sectors or file records.

 

Sounds like you've covered all the bases. I would ignore HDTune. Your hard drive is fine!

 

Sweet, cheers for the help.

 

No problem. I feel I should mention that its still never a bad idea to backup any important data you might have. And if you have really important data I'd back it up on 2 or 3 different devices as one is always bound to fail when you need it most.

Words of wisdom from a computer tech who hears things like "My babies first 3 years of life, including birth, were all photographed and stored on this flash drive and now its not working. You HAVE to save my pictures!".

 

I have backups of my backups.

And then the occasional backups of those, too.