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I just bought a brand new Seagate 1TB "Backup Plus" external USB 3.0 drive, and in running some diagnostics, HD Tune is showing a "calibration retry count" warning as shown in this screen grab.

screen grab

Every other test I've run on the drive seems to indicate that it's fine; a full error scan shows no damaged blocks, etc. I'm frankly a bit out of my depth here; is the HD Tune error something to be concerned about? Is it worth replacing the drive? I'm on a ThinkPad W520 Windows 7 64-bit.

Thanks for any feedback here.

Franck Dernoncourt
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nickpish
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  • You do have the option of using another SMART software. Download the acronis one for free (Google Acronis SMART) and see if it reports the same. If so, take it back! If not, then it could be interpretation by the software, false positive etc. – Dave Sep 04 '13 at 11:04
  • I wouldn't take it back. I would do a warranty claim. I would run the Seagate Tool, if it detects an error, just make a wrranty claim. If we are talking about yesterday, yeah, go ahead and just return it. – Ramhound Sep 04 '13 at 12:45
  • Dave-- thanks for the recommendation; I ran Acronis Drive Monitor and it found nothing wrong with the drive and reports no SMART issues. Ramhound-- I'll try the Seagate Tool as well; perhaps what I'm seeing in HD Tune is just a false positive of some kind? I'm also frankly uncertain how serious a "calibration retry count" warning might be for the health of the drive (?) – nickpish Sep 04 '13 at 22:26

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If you have the possibility to simply return the drive/exchange it for a new one you should change it. Just in case.

The Error itself points to a mechanical problem of the drive. This could be a one time issue, but could get worse over time.

If the store you bought it from does not have a fair return policy, you could try to stress it a little bit to see if things get worse and than exchange it via warranty.

A nice program to test and stress the drive is http://hddscan.com/. With the reading mode you can check for bad sectors (bad sector are only detectable when reading a sector from the drive). With butterfly reads you can stress the drive mechanics. Butterfly reading is like: 1st sector, last sector, 2nd sector, last-1, 3rd, last-2, ... So the head has to move a lot.

masgo
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