Running Spinrite 6.0 at any level on a certain Western Digital SATA HD (attached to my vintage (2004) Asus MN2E mainboard) always produced a flurry of questionable ECC and seek errors (SMART item 07). Changing the data cable did not help.
Since my Western Digtal OEM diagnostic gave the same drives a "pass" on extended test, I had considered the ECC and seek errors an artifact of SR6.0-- and not an accurate result. The drives themselves produced no speed or data reliability problems before or after the SR6.0 scan at any level.
Now, having upgraded to Spinrite 6.1, the ECC and seek errors no longer appear. Whereas I routinely saw ECC figures as high as several million during a routine SR6.0 scan, the same HD under SR6.1 shows no ECC or seek error problem on any scan level. And while seek errors had been so high under SR6.0 that the red line of excess ran halfway across the horizontal "Current" and "Max" metric, there is now absolutely no red area on the same Seek Error metric. And while Current and Max SMART numbers for seek errors reached a difference of one-to-two, ie. 100/200, there is now no difference between Current and Max under Seek Errors.
Since a SMART item 07 seek error indicates a problem with either a head positioning servo and/or drive medium "expansion" under test, this is very reassuring news. The HD itself is an older WD Black SATA drive (SATA3), model WDC WD1002FAEX-00Z3A0, with power-on hours 20,592, manufactured 2013, and used heavily and regularly.
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UPDATE February 14, 2025
The SMART Seek Error message has reappeared, displaying the value of 100/200 after about five minutes of level 4. it was a surprise to have the horizontal band of blue 200/200 suddenly display red halfway across the band. Another HD utility named Speccy continues to give this HD a clean bill of health on all SMART values.
Since my Western Digtal OEM diagnostic gave the same drives a "pass" on extended test, I had considered the ECC and seek errors an artifact of SR6.0-- and not an accurate result. The drives themselves produced no speed or data reliability problems before or after the SR6.0 scan at any level.
Now, having upgraded to Spinrite 6.1, the ECC and seek errors no longer appear. Whereas I routinely saw ECC figures as high as several million during a routine SR6.0 scan, the same HD under SR6.1 shows no ECC or seek error problem on any scan level. And while seek errors had been so high under SR6.0 that the red line of excess ran halfway across the horizontal "Current" and "Max" metric, there is now absolutely no red area on the same Seek Error metric. And while Current and Max SMART numbers for seek errors reached a difference of one-to-two, ie. 100/200, there is now no difference between Current and Max under Seek Errors.
Since a SMART item 07 seek error indicates a problem with either a head positioning servo and/or drive medium "expansion" under test, this is very reassuring news. The HD itself is an older WD Black SATA drive (SATA3), model WDC WD1002FAEX-00Z3A0, with power-on hours 20,592, manufactured 2013, and used heavily and regularly.
---------------------------------
UPDATE February 14, 2025
The SMART Seek Error message has reappeared, displaying the value of 100/200 after about five minutes of level 4. it was a surprise to have the horizontal band of blue 200/200 suddenly display red halfway across the band. Another HD utility named Speccy continues to give this HD a clean bill of health on all SMART values.
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