What to do with a new harddisk with smart error
 

About two weeks ago, I bought a new computer, which includes two 750 Gig (Samsung) harddisks. One of the disks seems to be a bit unstable. I tried running a RAID-0 array, only to get regular SMART warnings from Intel's raid utility. I looked around on the 'net, and found out that there's issues with Intel Raid when combined with Windows Vista, so I wasn't that worried.

Just to be on the safe side, I removed the RAID array, and re-installed Windows in a normal two-disk mode. Unfortunately, I seemed to have picked the wrong disc (they're identical, after all). Windows had a lot of problems, and the disk seemed to go downhill rapidly. I checked the drive with HD Tune, but this only added to the problem (or uncovered it); I got many "Raw read errors", "Current pending sector" counts and "TA Counters". Eventually the raw read errors became critical, and HD Tune decided my harddisk is a failure... :sad:

To be on the safe side, I re-installed Windows (again!) on the other disk. I checked the "bad" disk using Samsung's HUTIL tool. It found one problem: a simple read/write test had a command time-out. There was no surface damage, however. I performed a low-level format, because this apparently checks for bad sectors and "replaces" them with spares; this essentially hides the problem. After this low-level format, I haven't fount any problems with the disk. HD Tune doesn't find any errors any more. Other tools also don't seem to see a problem; Harddisk sentinel says the disk is 92% healthy (compared to 97% for my other disk), while smartmon says the disk is healthy.

The problem: I now have a harddisk that I don't trust, with a Smart error in HD Tune, but no problem in other tools... I don't really know what to do with it; I don't feel too comfortable putting data on it. Perhaps I could return it to the store to get it swapped, but I don't know if their tests will even find the error; after all, Samsung's own tool didn't.

My questions:
- Does anyone have experience with smart errors?
- Are HD Tune's results reliable? (HD Tune's findings are attached.)
- What about HUTIL? How reliable is that? Is the command time-out a problem, or could that be a motherboard/chipset issue?
- Is this a warrenty issue, or should I keep the disk (until it really dies)?

I'd just get it replaced. Depending on the policies of the store you bought it from "It has smart errors" should be enough to get a replacement.

Google recorded the results of their hard drive storage (they have something crazy like 100,000 HDDs in use) and made them public. I remember the results saying that Smart errors are good and bad: bad because a bad hard drive doesn't always display a Smart error, but good because those that DO display a Smart error are royally fucked. I'd get it replaced.