smartctl reports Reallocated_Sector_Ct FAILING_NOW.

sixtydoses

sixtydoses

I ran the smartctl tool today just to check how my hard disks are doing and to my surprise one of the result appeared as follows:

Code: 
[root@meh /usr]# smartctl -d ata -A /dev/ad4       
smartctl version 5.38 [amd64-portbld-freebsd8.0] Copyright (C) 2002-8 Bruce Allen
Home page is http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 16
Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE      UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
  1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate     0x000f   200   200   051    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  3 Spin_Up_Time            0x0003   165   164   021    Pre-fail  Always       -       4741
  4 Start_Stop_Count        0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       211
  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0033   065   065   140    Pre-fail  Always   FAILING_NOW 1080
  7 Seek_Error_Rate         0x000e   200   197   051    Old_age   Always       -       0
  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   085   085   000    Old_age   Always       -       11344
 10 Spin_Retry_Count        0x0012   100   100   051    Old_age   Always       -       0
 11 Calibration_Retry_Count 0x0012   100   100   051    Old_age   Always       -       0
 12 Power_Cycle_Count       0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       209
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032   193   193   000    Old_age   Always       -       5447
193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032   001   001   000    Old_age   Always       -       1227719
194 Temperature_Celsius     0x0022   097   092   000    Old_age   Always       -       50
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032   101   101   000    Old_age   Always       -       99
197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0012   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
198 Offline_Uncorrectable   0x0010   200   200   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count    0x003e   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate   0x0008   200   200   051    Old_age   Offline      -       0

And this makes my heart pounding even harder:

Code: 
[root@meh /usr]# smartctl -H /dev/ad4
smartctl version 5.38 [amd64-portbld-freebsd8.0] Copyright (C) 2002-8 Bruce Allen
Home page is http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: FAILED!
Drive failure expected in less than 24 hours. SAVE ALL DATA.
Failed Attributes:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE      UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0033   065   065   140    Pre-fail  Always   FAILING_NOW 1080

I think smartctl is reliable when it comes to predicting the life of a hard disk.. but by any chance, could this be a false alarm? Well yea even if this turns out to be a false alarm I won't sit still until I've backed up all my stuff. But I guess am just too frustrated since the hard disk isn't that old enough to stop spinning..

Plus I think I'm seriously lucky to run the smartctl tool today since I rarely monitor my hard disk anyway, only to figure out it has less than 24 hours before it'll fail. Could I be this lucky?

This is my second WD hard disk, I think it's about 2 years old. My first WD hard disk failed on me when it was less than a year old. Am I just unlucky or what?

I've turned my system down since am at work right now. Thinking of doing a backup tonight.
 
Run a selftest: smartctl -t long /dev/ad4

2 years is actually quite old. I've had brand new harddrives that start failing in a few days. Harddrives unfortunately come in a very varying quality.
 
It's all very random. Even "good quality" HDDs can fail after 1 month of normal use. It happens. And I have HDDs still working fine after a decade of intensive use.

S.M.A.R.T. is known to only find a portion of failures (like a third) and it can return false positives.

But I wouldn't take too much risks if I were you. I'd make sure I have a working backup ASAP.
 
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