bad hard drive? how to know?

[faumble]

I have installed a new hard drive on my macpro, 1TB samsung spinpoint, and noticed it a bit slow so with disk utility I verified the disk and it says it is fine, but I went to windows through bootcamp and with the s.m.a.r.t. utility of speedfan I receive various s.m.a.r.t. errors and a fitness of 40%!! I tried a second time and it gave me 0% and said hard drive might have a fatal hardware error, then I went back to macos and tried again the disk utility and it tells me the disk is fine!! so how can I check which test is saying the truth?
also, could you guys please recommend me a software to diagnose hard drives for macos (10.5)?

thanks very much!

 

[operator207]

I have never needed anything for diagnosis, but I found these links with a google search. No clue if the programs are any good:

http://www.peachpit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=693649

However my recommendation, is its a samsung, they have disk utilities they use themselves for hard drive diagnosis, and you have Windows via boot camp, use their software. It took a few searches, but found an image to boot off of for a CD: http://www.samsung.com/global/business/hdd/support/utilities/Support_HUTIL.html

You will probably have to run it regardless to get an RMA out of Samsung.

 

[faumble]

thanks very much operator207! really apprecaite it!
Can I use the cd version of samsung's diagnose utility on my macpro? it is a DOS utility and if am not wrong, only works on pcs?

also, this is the error am receiving from s.m.a.r.t. :

-your hard disk has 647 pending sectors (this value is very large and your hard disk should be replaced). Those are sectors that couldn't be properly read and that the hard disk logic is waiting for a write operation to try to remap to a spare sector (if available). According to the Reallocated Sector Count attribute, your hard disk seems to have available spare sectors. A simple disk surface scan won't be enough to force the remap operation. You need a read/write surface scan to remap the sector. The best option should be a tool that knows about what should be read from that sector so that it has some option to apply the best fix to the missing data.

-your hard disk has 1 offline uncorrectable sectors. Those are sectors that an offline scanning found as unreadable. Offline scanning is a process that can be automatically started by the hard disk logic when a long enough idle period is detected or that can be forced by some tool. Those unreadable sectors are identified and the hard disk logic is waiting for a write command that will overwrite them to try to remap them to spare sectors (if available). According to the Reallocated Sector Count attribute, your hard disk seems to have available spare sectors. A simple disk surface scan won't be enough to force the remap operation. You need a read/write surface scan to remap the sector. The best option should be a tool that knows about what should be read from that sector so that it has some option to apply the best fix to the missing data.


so maybe I can fix the drive? I am guessing one of the tools from your link might do the job, what am concerned abut is how trustable this fix can be....may the problem reappear or my hd fail? or anyone has any experience with a read/write surface scan applicaion that can help me out?

Thnaks very much again!

 

[operator207]

The cd is its own OS. It should work in any computer you can boot from cd. You mp will boot from cd. I believe you hold option down for the boot options. I'm on my iPhone, so I can't look it up at the moment.