Question regarding HDD health

[Zixinus]

In our household we just had a portable HDD go bad. It looks like it is a hardware fault on the read/write head because we can hear clicking as soon as we connect it up to a computer. Thankfully, there is no irreplaceable data on it but it gave us a good scare.

Because of this I would really like some help on detecting HDDs going back early. I have used CrystalDiskInfo and it just gave me a warning that tells me "Caution [C5] Current Pending Sector Count: 5"

Now, aside that I should be getting a new HDD and transferring files there, what does this mean? How does CrystalDiskInfo determine a drive's health?

Are there other tools that can help me determine a harddrive's health and give me early warning dying HDDs. Also, what brand of HDDs are recommended?

[Borgholio]

HD Tune will work to test the performance and health of a drive. It's free and it works. The built-in Windows Chkdsk works too for cleaning up file system errors. I typically run a Chkdsk once a month or so as part of routine maintenance.

As far as hard drives, I have always had good luck with Western Digital drives. Their performance is a bit lower than some other brands in my experience, but that's made up for with reliability. I've also had good results with Hitachi. Seagate used to be great but they have a less than stellar reputation these days so I tend to avoid them.

[Edi]

What Crystal Disk Info does is read the drive's own S.M.A.R.T monitoring system log files, which give indications of what sort of state the drive is in.

As for current pending sector count means, per the Wikipedia article:

Count of "unstable" sectors (waiting to be remapped, because of unrecoverable read errors). If an unstable sector is subsequently read successfully, the sector is remapped and this value is decreased. Read errors on a sector will not remap the sector immediately (since the correct value cannot be read and so the value to remap is not known, and also it might become readable later); instead, the drive firmware remembers that the sector needs to be remapped, and will remap it the next time it's written.[36] However some drives will not immediately remap such sectors when written; instead the drive will first attempt to write to the problem sector and if the write operation is successful then the sector will be marked good (in this case, the "Reallocation Event Count" (0xC4) will not be increased). This is a serious shortcoming, for if such a drive contains marginal sectors that consistently fail only after some time has passed following a successful write operation, then the drive will never remap these problem sectors.

Seriously, read the Wiki article, since it gives a very good overview and it also flags in red the portions that you need to pay attention to.

I second the suggestion of Western Digital hard drives. I have never lost one to hard drive failure (even after tens of thousands of power-on hours). On the other hand, of the Seagate drives I've had, every single one has died of hardware failure sooner or later. Often relatively sooner rather than later. From what I have observed of customer machines, most of the imminent hardware failure drives exposed by Crystal Disk have been Seagate. Not all, but the majority.

[The Vortex Empire]

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/best-hard-drive/

Yeah, don't get Seagate.

[Zixinus]

I tried HD tune to appraise the condition of my deskup HDD and it has failed. Does anyone know any good alternatives?
I need it to be able to evaluate portable HDDs too, which the free version of HD tune doesn't allow.

Yes, I'm also googling this but I'm asking because I'd like someone's experience-based opinion rather than what Google throws out.

[InsaneTD]

Re; clicking, were you trying to connect it to your computer via a usb hub? Cause my verbatim does that when my girlfriend tries connecting it through a hub, but works perfectly fine straight into the computer.

[Borgholio]

I tried HD tune to appraise the condition of my deskup HDD and it has failed. Does anyone know any good alternatives?
I need it to be able to evaluate portable HDDs too, which the free version of HD tune doesn't allow.

Yes, I'm also googling this but I'm asking because I'd like someone's experience-based opinion rather than what Google throws out.

How did it fail? Always worked fine for me.

What if you just try the stock Windows Chkdsk?

[Zixinus]

Re; clicking, were you trying to connect it to your computer via a usb hub? Cause my verbatim does that when my girlfriend tries connecting it through a hub, but works perfectly fine straight into the computer.

Nope, it does that when directly connected to the computer.

[Zixinus]

I noticed this after edit time ended.

Yes, I'm also googling this but I'm asking because I'd like someone's experience-based opinion rather than what Google throws out.

How did it fail? Always worked fine for me.

What if you just try the stock Windows Chkdsk?

When I asked it to do a Error scan, its window went the transparent-blank crashing programs make (you see what is behind it or a window that was in front), it finally made a mini-window (likely an error message) that was also transparent-blank. I closed that and it properly crashed with the Windows Crash report thingy. I'll try again. But I'll need another program to evaluate the state of the several portable HDDs in the house.

I did a run with chkdsk in quick-fix mode but when I do a sector-by-sector check it gets stuck on certain sectors.

[Borgholio]

I did a run with chkdsk in quick-fix mode but when I do a sector-by-sector check it gets stuck on certain sectors.

When it encounters a bad sector it will retry several times and then move on to the next one if it can't fix or recover data from the sector. If you have many bad sectors in a row, it may seem like it takes a long time because it's checking each and every single sector several times. Eventually it'll get through them. You may have to let it run overnight if you have lots of bad sectors.

[phongn]

I tried HD tune to appraise the condition of my deskup HDD and it has failed. Does anyone know any good alternatives?
I need it to be able to evaluate portable HDDs too, which the free version of HD tune doesn't allow.

Try HDD Guardian.

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/best-hard-drive/

Yeah, don't get Seagate.

Note that Backblaze runs their drives beyond design specification - they use bog-standard consumer drives in big, custom chassis. That said, it's not surprising that HGST is the reliability leader.

I second the suggestion of Western Digital hard drives. I have never lost one to hard drive failure (even after tens of thousands of power-on hours). On the other hand, of the Seagate drives I've had, every single one has died of hardware failure sooner or later. Often relatively sooner rather than later. From what I have observed of customer machines, most of the imminent hardware failure drives exposed by Crystal Disk have been Seagate. Not all, but the majority.

Come on man, you know that data is not the plural of anecdote.