Word of advice to Dell Outlet laptop buyers-check that SMART data

I bought a Dell latitude E6540 about 5 days ago, and 3 days in I noticed 2 issues, one of which I will not talk about, since I am talking about the major issue. I am referring to the SMART data. Not all of these drives will be bad, so check the numbers carefully and be sure. If you are uncertain, use HDAT2 and see how it fares. If it puts a ! next to the drive model or any values the drives are bad enough to warrant new drives. Larger drives like 750-1TB+ also tend to have more legroom too so they may last longer with high numbers. Still, I'd be careful with these drives. SSD's tend to be the same for underprovisioned drives, too(as in 240GB drives). Unlocked drives(i.e 256GB) have room to fall back on, but have far less.

I checked the SMART data on this drive since I heard Dell uses used hard drives in their Dell Outlet laptops. I have also confirmed this laptop uses a Seagate which has a bad reputation these days since they "cheaped out" on their spinning hard drives as they make SSD's now. Well, I believe the used drive thing now(Seagate Certified Repaired drives are technically used, too). The lesson here should be if you have a Dell Latitude with a SSHD or FIPS/Opal drive, check the drive and make sure it's not a Seagate. If it is, see how bad the SMART attributes as soon as possible.

How do you do this? I ran 2 programs on my E6540 to find this(one of which I have more experience with), but I didn't run it since I don't have a port replicator for my DOS friendly printer, so I only ran 2/3 programs. If you have access to a DOS friendly Parallel printer and a E series dock with Parallel, you may wish to try HDAT2 too. I used CrystalDisk Info and and Parted Magic, and cross checked with HDAT2.

First download Speccy Portable, and check under Storage for the drive model-in short, if you have a 500GB drive, it will probably be Seagate. If it starts with ST, it's a Seagate.

You can also find the SMART data here too under "S.M.A.R.T Attributes", though I would run it in anything else if you want to get some credibility. It's probably accurate, but play it safe. If you wish to include it, cross compare before putting it in the return! I don't have experience with Speccy SMART data accuracy. The main problem is it uses the same method as Dell. As in they check the thresholds and not the raw numbers. The current/worst set is a better gauge of the health of a hard drive.

After you confirm your drive is a Seagate, download CrystalDisk Info Portable and run it. Pull the window until you read ALL of the data in one screenshot. If ANY numbers are at the Worst numbers, RMA the machine as the drive may very well die early and it usually grows. Note for consumer grade laptops: You may have to wait for SMART and the Dell Diagnostics to fail first, so frequent off drive backups are recommended.

Take a screenshot of CrystalDisk Info with Print Screen or the Snipping tool in Win7/Win8 and print this. Ship this with the laptop.

Next, you want to run Parted Magic-if you have a Ultimate Boot CD on hand it already has this in the CD. If you don't want Ultimate Boot CD then get it online through their website(as of now there's a paywall for the 2015 version) but MajorGeeks has the 2014 version up for free. This costs 5$ now.

Once you run this run it from memory to speed things up Find Disk Health and read out these numbers. Look for anything that says  "pre failure". If it does RMA the machine and use a digital camera to document it, save it to a .txt file or set your printer up in Linux. I would do it in .txt since I find most Inkjets are flaky in Linux unless it's older. It's fine if you own a Laser printer, though.  If you use a camera you should use a clean area and zoom in on the screen. If you have a FAT16 or FAT32 formatted flashdrive on hand take a  screencap and put it on the flashdrive for printing instead.

As to backing up before returning the machine choose your tool yourself. I used Windows Backup on mine, and it worked well enough but be warned if the drive is so bad it has major errors this will fail and you will need to resort to a manual backup. If you have access to real backup software, use it. Windows Backup fails as soon as it sees enough bad sectors.

So, what can be told from this? Used hard drives without at least checking the Current and Worst numbers in SMART should not be used, and Dell is shipping Outlet laptops with bad drives and the Dell diagnostics are passing drives that should not be reused and should be destroyed. If they did, it would catch this problem before it gets this bad. Dell needs to stop checking SMART thresholds and worry about the Worst number instead. Once drives are at the worst numbers the drive really should not be used. I would check your Dell refurbs every now and again for 21 days, too. This is to ensure you never need to call in about the drives.