SOLVED Relocate Current Pending Sector

[revengineer]

I have a WD red drive with one current pending sector, see smart data below. The drive has been stable in this state and I would like to use it for non-critical backup. So I am not concerned about loosing files. Is there a way to force relocation of that sector so that it is no longer used?

Code:

Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE      UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
  1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate     0x002f   200   200   051    Pre-fail  Always       -       103
  3 Spin_Up_Time            0x0027   184   183   021    Pre-fail  Always       -       5800
  4 Start_Stop_Count        0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       583
  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0033   200   200   140    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  7 Seek_Error_Rate         0x002e   100   253   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   065   065   000    Old_age   Always       -       26229
 10 Spin_Retry_Count        0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
 11 Calibration_Retry_Count 0x0032   100   253   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
 12 Power_Cycle_Count       0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       36
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       17
193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       634
194 Temperature_Celsius     0x0022   114   104   000    Old_age   Always       -       36
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       1
198 Offline_Uncorrectable   0x0030   100   253   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count    0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       1
200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate   0x0008   200   200   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0

 

[subhuman]

The drive firmware should automatically (transparent to you) relocate that sector next time it's written to.
I'd be more concerned with the raw read error rate.

 

[revengineer]

@subhuman I am running badblocks on the drive. It completed the first write pass, then the error was detected during the subsequent read cycle. This did not do what you proposed it should.

 

[subhuman]

The pending sector was flagged AFTER the write cycle?
Then it hasn't had a chance to relocate it yet. The first write attempt to the sector after it's been flagged is when the relocation should occur.

 

[Alecmascot]

FYI
Fixing pending sectors

 

[revengineer]

Thanks for the additional responses.

@subhuman The pending sector indeed disappeared after the second badblocks pass. Interestingly the reallocated sector count did not get incremented and is still zero. When badblocks completes, I will run a long smart test to check the state of the drive.

@Alecmascot These instructions may come in handy in the future when I need to fix a bad sector on a live drive. In my case badblock should take care of the issue then.

 

[revengineer]

To close this one out, the multi-pass badblocks run seemed to have fixed the issue, so simply exercising the block indeed gets rid of pending sectors. The subsequent long smart check passed without errors. The smart log now shows zero pending sectors. Interestingly, the sector seems to have been fixed without relocation. At least, the number of reallocated sectors is zero as well.