I bought a WD external hard drive near the end of 2024, and now in 2026 CrystalDiskInfo reports its health as "Caution." The warning highlights Reallocated Sectors Count (05), with a raw value of 000000000DA60, and Current Pending Sector Count (C5), with a raw value of 00000000002D. I also dropped the drive shortly after buying it, which caused the top cover to come loose, although I put it back together immediately. Is the drive likely to fail, and can I safely continue using it for another couple of years? Replacing it right now would be difficult financially.
3 Answers
Yes, treat this as a failing hard drive rather than a harmless warning. Reallocated sectors mean the drive has already found damaged areas and substituted spare ones. Pending sectors are even more concerning because they are currently difficult or impossible for the drive to read reliably. The drop may have caused physical damage, and the drive could continue working for months or fail without warning tomorrow. Copy anything important to another device immediately, then replace the drive when possible. Don’t keep the only copy of important files on it.
If the drive is still within its warranty period, check whether it can be replaced. Avoid running an intensive repair or surface scan before copying your data, since stressing a damaged disk can make it fail sooner. After your files are backed up, it could be used only for replaceable data, but it should not hold anything important as its sole copy.
The exact raw numbers depend on how the diagnostic tool displays them, but the important point is that both attributes are nonzero and being flagged. A pending-sector count can lead to unreadable files or corruption, while a growing reallocated count suggests the problem is progressing. Monitor the values only as a temporary measure; a stable number still doesn’t make the drive trustworthy.
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