Why does CrystalDiskInfo see my dying HDD as good?

I've found it hard to get a good interpretation of 'Reported Uncorrectable Errors'. Probably not to do with bad sectors at all...

"Generally the Reported Uncorrectable Errors reflect problems during data transfer between the hard disk itself and the disk controller (motherboard or the add-on card you use). This is slightly similar to the data communication errors but in some cases there may be a bit different."

I.e. ECC couldn't correct them.
Reported Uncorrectable Errors: Errors that could not be recovered using hardware error correction methods.

Matthew Wai said:

Someone on another forum thinks otherwise. See this post: ��【Just a moment...】

I cannot say if that is relevant as it is talking about a different OS and format (ext4 vs NTFS).

Windows and NTFS do have some built in tolerance for uncorrectable errors, and Crystaldiskinfo takes that into account.

If you get close to 100 threshold, it will start alarming.

In the end, people always take worst case scenario and often overreact.

In reality these things are risk based. Only you can judge if you are prepared to take none, some or a lot of risk.

Drives can fail for may reasons not covered by SMART e.g. interface electronics is a common failure.

All drives are destined to fail sooner or later.

So, you can worry excessively or, as we discussed, make backups which are your real protection.

The problem with all diagnostic programs is nobody can say from the figures whether a drive will fail tomorrow, or in 5 years time.

It is a bit like getting a lump on your body. Vast majority are just relatively harmless fat cysts but if you loolook at all the diagnostics online, you will end up worrying that it is cancer or similar. in fact, Doctors really hate patients self diagnosing - I need to go to hosiptal now. I have a sniffle - it must be the latest COVID etc. blah blah blah.

My point is it is too easy to come to false conclusions. I just regard these tools as alerting you to early warning signs.

So you should probably be preparing yourself for need to replace drive but no need to panic - it could be a couple of years or more yet.

Matthew Wai said:

If you right click any line on the SMART tab, you can choose "decimal"...

Matthew Wai said:

It says "Hard Disk Sentinel License Key Free". Does it mean that I will never have to enter a license key as long as I have used the same "hdsentinel_setup.exe" to install it?

After 1 or 2 installs you have to redownload a copy to get the free lifetime, again.

So I guess if you want to reinstall a bunch of times...... download 10 copies, or whatever.

Matthew Wai said:

Assuming that I reinstall it after clean installing Windows, how does it know that I have already installed it once before? Does the company have a server that will keep the installation record?

That, I can't tell ya. I just tried installing the same copy 2 times I think, and the 2nd time failed.
I used REVO and the scan for leftovers to remove the first copy.

Matthew Wai said:

REVO possibly misses some leftover.

I realize that.
Mostly it's a registry key, somewhere, that keeps track of registration.
But these days, who knows. It may indeed check in with a server.