Samsung SMART B8 parameter(End-to-End error) fail. What does it mean? What could be the cause? What should I do?

Question

On a secondary PC, when I started it the mainboard boot screen said the SMART failed for my HDD, and that I should backup asap. I've checked in Windows with HDD Health, and it seems that parameter B8(End-to-End error) has dropped to 1 or 0(I don't remember it exacly and I'm affraid to start that PC again, because I have some valuable data on that HDD).

Then, first thing that I did was to thange the SATA cable, thinking that a faulty cable could be the cause to End-to-End errors. But, as expected, the SMART parameter did not reset itself. So, I don't actually know if it really was a faulty cable.

What do you think? What could be the cause of these End-to-End erros? What should I do?
I'd want to try a backup, but I'm worried about gettind corrupt data, due to this problem.

The HDD is a 2 years old, Samsung, 500GB, SATA2, 16MB buffer, 2x250Gb platters. Unfortunately I don't recall the exact model. If needed I could provide it tonight.

Solution

Found this, not sure if it helps or not, Any SMART error is Not a good sign, back up your data now!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.M.A.R.T.

B8 - End-to-End error Quote: This attribute is a part of HP's SMART IV technology and it means that after transferring through the cache RAM data buffer the parity data between the host and the hard drive did not match.

Comments

[Nick]

Could it be cause by a faulty cable?