Intermittent "Drive Failure" on external SATA drive

[Ralf_CT]

I'm concerned about an intermittent "Drive Failure" when running "sensors only" (HWiNFO32 v 5.02.2575, and prior versions) on my external SATA backup drive (WDC WD10EZEX-75M2NA0).  My previous internal drive had a similar problem, with it failing soon afterwards.  S.M.A.R.T shows everything's fine.  I'm not sure if this is an issue with HWiNFO, or if my drive is failing. 

Previously I had allocated a Page File to the external drive, every few months the drive would 'disappear', Windows would present a BSOD and the PC would re-boot.  I've since removed the Page File from the drive and there have been no further re-boots... but I still get the "Drive Failure" message.

I have attached a drive report summary.

 

[Martin]

I'm not sure if I understand your problem exactly. Do you think that running HWiNFO sensors can cause your drive to fail? That's not possible.
HWiNFO just examines SMART information from drive and checks whether some items cross the vendor-defined thresholds for a failure. However, I believe that SMART cannot always predict a drive failure, a lot of items there depend on how well a particular vendor/model supports monitoring/prediction.
Where do you get the "Drive Failure" message ?

 

[Ralf_CT]

I'm not sure if I understand your problem exactly. Do you think that running HWiNFO sensors can cause your drive to fail? That's not possible.
HWiNFO just examines SMART information from drive and checks whether some items cross the vendor-defined thresholds for a failure. However, I believe that SMART cannot always predict a drive failure, a lot of items there depend on how well a particular vendor/model supports monitoring/prediction.
Where do you get the "Drive Failure" message ?

When I start HWiNFO and run "Sensors Only" the Sensor Status window reports "Yes" "Yes" "Yes" "Yes" for the particular drive.  Not always, as I wasn't able to replicate it now for a screenprint (attached).

 

[Martin]

I'll need to see the situation when you can replicate it.
But if this is just an intermittent reporting, I think it might be a glitch in the drive SMART status reporting. Note that even if it reports "Drive Failure" it doesn't mean that the drive is really failing - it means that just one of the thresholds has crossed the critical margin. The exact drive state depends on the particular problematic parameter and how well the vendor (WDC) has implemented the status monitoring/reporting.

 

[Ralf_CT]

I'll need to see the situation when you can replicate it.
But if this is just an intermittent reporting, I think it might be a glitch in the drive SMART status reporting. Note that even if it reports "Drive Failure" it doesn't mean that the drive is really failing - it means that just one of the thresholds has crossed the critical margin. The exact drive state depends on the particular problematic parameter and how well the vendor (WDC) has implemented the status monitoring/reporting.

Situation replicated.  It reports as per the attached.

 

[Martin]

How long does it stay reporting the failure, is this just a few seconds ?
Also, when checking the report you attached earlier that drive doesn't seem to have any thresholds defined (all values are "Always OK"), so it should not report a failure at all as all values should always pass. This looks like a drive firmware bug.