SMART Hard Drive Warning

[Ton21]

I keep getting an error upon startup:  

SMART Hard Disk Error

The SMART hard disk check has detected an imminent failure. To ensure data loss, please backup the content immediately and run the Hard Disk Test is System Diagnostics.
Hard Disk 1 (301)

When I run the test (both Quick and Extensive) I get a similar error:  
SMART Check: Not available
Short DST: Not available   (When I run the long test, it says Long DST: Not available)

This is a brand new hard drive. I booted from live usb in Ubuntu to text the hard drive and found no bad blocks  by using the badblocks command.  Though from Gparted it did tell me that the block size is 2048 and linux thinks it is 512

I replaced the drive because I got what I thought were real Hard Drive warnings from the SMART check upon startup.  The badblocks command found thousands of bad blocks on that drive, so I replaced it.  Since the warranty was up, I bought a new hard drive and switched to Ubuntu Linux (from Windows 8.1)

Now I get the warnings as described at the beginnnig of this post.  I reseated the hard drive and that didn't work.  I have legacy mode enabled in the BIOS to work with this OS.  Could that have anything to do with it?

There wasn't a way to turn off the SMART check (that I could find) from the BIOS. I haven't switched to UEFI mode only (by disabling the Legacy mode) becaused the BIOS gives warnings of possibley not being able to boot (which I thought was worse).

I am not sure what the next step would be to repair.  Any help would be much appreciated.

Edit.  I switched the setting to disable the Legacy mode and it did not help.  It seemed to not boot consistently so I re-enabled the Legacy mode.  

I read somewhere that perhaps a BIOS update would get rid of the false positive, though I am not sure why a false positive would all of a sudden become an issue.  Since I don't have Windows, I was wondering if a version of FreeDos would support the running of the new BIOS version .exe file.  Does anyone have any experience with this?  Is this a prudent direction to go?

[Chimney_83]

Thanks for the post and Welcome to HP Forums @Ton21,

I understand that you are getting a SMART Hard Disk Error with you turn the computer ON. Happy to help. 

Kudos to you for trying to troubleshoot the issue on your own.
Support on HP notebook is limited to Windows. 

Have you replaced the HDD with the same specifications that came with the computer?

Recommend you to refer to this article for the resolving startup errors. 

As the diagnostics indicate that the HDD is not getting detected, recommend you to replace the HDD again with a new HDD and check or contact our phone support for the service options available. 

Recommend you to reinstall Windows with the recovery kit created on the computer or contact our phone support to order one. 

You can also update BIOS by downloading it to a USB drive and installing it. Click here for assistance. 

Hope this helps. 

If the information I've provided was helpful,

Please give us some reinforcement by clicking the "Accepted Solution" and "Kudos" buttons,

That’ll help us and others see that we’ve got the answers!

Good Luck.

Disclaimer: HP Doesn't recommend any upgrade/downgrade of any hardware parts or software that is bundled with the product. It may affect the manufacturer's warranty and performance. You can change the configuration at your own risk.

[Ton21]

Thank you for the reply @Chimney_83.  I followed the link provided to attempt to update the BIOS outside on a computer that is not bootable to WIndows.  I successfullycreated the USB BIOS update tool on another Windows machine.  I was not able to complete the BIOS update, because the computer that I want to update does not have the menu choice "BIOS Management" or Firmware Management"  as described in the video and the instructions.  Is there another way to accoplish this task?  

To answer your other question, Yes the replacement hard drive had the same specifications and size as the original.

[mdklassen]

>   Though from Gparted it did tell me that the block size is 2048 and linux thinks it is 512.

Linux is creating 512-byte "blocks", and writes them.

The disk-controller takes those 512 bytes, reads the 2048-byte block from the disk, changes 512 bytes, and rewrites the 2048-byte block.

Until a few years ago, SATA disk-drives used 512-byte blocks. 

Now, to pack more data in the same space, new drives use 2048-byte blocks. 

So, instead of:

  512-byte block / inter-record gap / 512-byte / I.R.G. / 512 / I.R.G. / 512 / I.R.G

the disk now is 2048-byte block / I.R.G. -- no need to leave space for 3/4 of those I.R.G.'s.

Can you connect your disk-drive to another computer, i.e., one running Windows ?

Then, on that computer, Google-search for "download free SPECCY".

Download this software, install it, and run it.

It will report on 20 to 30 different values that the 'S.M.A.R.T.' technology is measuring.

For example, if the disk-drive gets "too hot", then S.M.A.R.T. will set one flag, and this triggers the "imminent disk failure" message.

[Ton21]

Hello @mdklassen.  Thank you for the reply and for the information.  I am not sure how I can hook the hard drive up to another computer, but I can boot into a distro of Linux (Ubuntu).  What information do you feel would be helpful?  I can use a similar utility that can provide the data.

[mdklassen]

Either open-up a desktop computer case, and connect the disk-drive's "power" and "data" cables, or buy an external SATA-to-USB adapter.

SPECCY gives information like:

OK?

[Ton21]

I will purchase a cable and get it hooked up to the other box.

[Ton21]

The company that I purchased the new hard drive from was kind enough to send me another one.  I am getting the exact same SMART warning of and iminent hard drive failure.  This is another brand new drive.  I suspect that these warnings are incorrect.  Is there any way to reset or turn off these warnings?  

I was hoping to do a BIOS update, but HP's instructions were incorrect, so I was unable to upgrade.  Currently there is no OS on the hard disk.

[mdklassen]

> I am getting the exact same SMART warning of and iminent hard drive failure.  This is another brand new drive.  

Can you attach the brand-new drive to a working computer, and run that SPECCY software.

Be sure to look at both disk-drives in that "working" computer, to see which one is "flagged",

and to see which of the measurement-points is flagged as "bad".

> I suspect that these warnings are incorrect.  

I disagree.  Most of SMART resides on the circuit-board that is attached to the "spinning" part of the disk-drive.

The motherboard just "queries" the disk-drive, and reports what SMART has detected.

> Is there any way to reset or turn off these warnings?  

Enter BIOS SETUP.  It might be possible, though "dangerous", to disable SMART reporting.

Would you like to be warned that your automobile is running out of gas, or to have it just "quit" at a bad time?

> I was hoping to do a BIOS update, but HP's instructions were incorrect, so I was unable to upgrade.  

My "rule-of-thumb" is to NEVER do a BIOS-update to try to solve a problem, unless all other trouble-shooting has failed *AND* the documentation for the BIOS-update addresses the issue that I am experiencing.

> Currently there is no OS on the hard disk.

I've seen Windows 10 _refuse_ to install on a disk-drive that SMART has flagged as "bad".

[Ton21]

Here is the output of one of the new drives (this drive would accept an OS) from Speccy:

Manufacturer Kingston
Product Family SSDNow
Form Factor 2.5-inch
Heads 16
Cylinders 60,801
Tracks 15,504,255
Sectors 976,768,065
SATA type SATA-III 6.0Gb/s
Device type Fixed
ATA Standard ATA8-ACS
Serial Number 96IACKS8T
Firmware Version Number AM0P2A
LBA Size 48-bit LBA
Power On Count Unknown
Power On Time Unknown
Speed 5400 RPM
Features S.M.A.R.T., APM, NCQ
Max. Transfer Mode SATA III 6.0Gb/s
Used Transfer Mode SATA II 3.0Gb/s
Interface USB (SATA)
Capacity 465 GB
Real size 500,107,861,504 bytes
RAID Type None
S.M.A.R.T
Status Unknown
Partition 0
Partition ID Disk #1, Partition #0
Size 512 MB
Partition 1
Partition ID Disk #1, Partition #1
Size 465 GB

Just for comparison, below is the drive that I know has bad sectors on it.  I pulled it out of the trash to do this test.

Attribute name Real value Current Worst Threshold Raw Value Status
01 Read Error Rate 0 114 99 6 00044A4443 Good
03 Spin-Up Time 0 ms 99 99 0 0000000000 Good
04 Start/Stop Count 2,633 98 98 20 0000000A49 Good
05 Reallocated Sectors Count 0 100 100 36 0000000000 Good
07 Seek Error Rate 0 75 60 30 0001EBEC7A Good
09 Power-On Hours (POH) 85d 19h 98 98 0 000000080B Good
0A Spin Retry Count 0 100 100 97 0000000000 Good
0C Device Power Cycle Count 2,626 98 98 20 0000000A42 Good
B8 End-to-End error / IOEDC 0 100 100 99 0000000000 Good
BB Reported Uncorrectable Errors 0 100 100 0 0000000000 Good
BC Command Timeout 0 100 100 0 0000000000 Good
BD High Fly Writes (WDC) 0 100 100 0 0000000000 Good
BE Airflow Temperature 43 °C 57 53 45 002B18002B Good
BF G-sense error rate 134 100 100 0 0000000086 Good
C0 Power-off Retract Count 60 100 100 0 000000003C Good
C1 Load/Unload Cycle Count 49,924 76 76 0 000000C304 Good
C2 Temperature 43 °C 43 47 0 000000002B Good
C3 Hardware ECC Recovered 0 54 51 0 00044A4443 Good
C5 Current Pending Sector Count 0 100 100 0 0000000000 Good
C6 Uncorrectable Sector Count 0 100 100 0 0000000000 Good
C7 UltraDMA CRC Error Count 0 200 200 0 0000000000 Good
Partition 0
Partition ID Disk #0, Partition #0

Size 7.00 GB
Partition 1
Partition ID Disk #0, Partition #1
Disk Letter C:
File System NTFS
Volume Serial Number 96CDF6AF
Size 142 GB
Used Space 26.2 GB (18%)
Free Space 115 GB (82%)