HD with bad sectors : Partition good sectors?

P

Positively Negative

Expert Member
Joined
Nov 18, 2009
Messages
1,107
Reaction score
1
Location
Mzanzi 4 Sho
Hey guys,
ok so my 500 gb has recently decided to fail. I have been doing tons of scans and hard disk sentinel states it has 45 bad sectors. The disk is obviously damaged in certain areas.I have backup up all my data and already completed a format.
Last night i ran HDD Regenerator and it started to pick up the bad sectors at around the 300gb mark. Is it possible for me to partition this drive up to say 250 gigs and just use it as a spare drive for non important data.I have already completed the partition and run a full chkdsk on it.No errors found and it seems to be working fine well.

Is there any software/tools i can try use that will always skip the bad sectors and write files and data to only decent working sectors?

OR Should i rather just tee up the HD outside and take a full swing with my 3 iron and bid farewell:D :cry:

Any advice appreciated
 
Those bad sectors spreading is quite likely, so i would go with the 3 iron.
 
Nah, it's over for that drive when they start incrementing like that.
 
With the right tools you can assign those sectors to the G-list but as they said, the drive is on it's way out. I wouldn't recommend a 3 iron though, rather 1 wood, preferably a titanium one to get that nice 'ping' sound.
 
Use it for target practice rather.

but yeah, once it start to get bad sectors, it can be chucked away. No use in playing Russian Roulette with your data.

Hard disks are funny things. They might take ages to die (got a seagate 40Mb HDD which was as tough as nails) or they die just as soon as you look funny at them (Western Digital 1.2Gb drive).
 
Guys,
seriously why do we even bother with external hard drives if they give so many FU!!ING Issues?
My Samsung 600gb has gone from 4 weak sectors to 7 weak sectors overnight?! Does this mean another wonderful crash is immenent :(
I just don't see the point of having them .Yeah it's an external hard drive so they expect people to move around alot with them.
I can't even afford another HD right now and that's what annoys me most.
 
Positively Negative said:
Guys,
seriously why do we even bother with external hard drives if they give so many FU!!ING Issues?
My Samsung 600gb has gone from 4 weak sectors to 7 weak sectors overnight?! Does this mean another wonderful crash is immenent :(
I just don't see the point of having them .Yeah it's an external hard drive so they expect people to move around alot with them.
I can't even afford another HD right now and that's what annoys me most.
Click to expand...

Treat externals like a flakey data medium. i.e. Use it but only for stuff that you've got a backup of.

As for the drive, depends on whether those weak sectors got allocated to a spare one or not. If you're running out of spares then yes its on its way out.
 
It does happen over time, the magnetic surface deteriorates slowly and the problem gets worse as time goes by. The drive will remap these sectors though, so it shouldn't affect the integrity of your data. You used the term 'weak sectors' so I assume you are seeing this with HDD Sentinel?

There's a nice free piece of software called MHDD. You can do a full scan of your drive and enable the remap feature, it will remap any bad or slow sectors. The drive should be connected directly to the SATA port of the machine though when you run the test, and the data be backed up.

Have a look at the SMART values to get a rough idea of the drive's health. Irrespective of whether or not you have 1, none, or 500 bad/weak sectors, the drive could continue to function just fine for the next 10 years, or it could fail completely tomorrow. Backup your important data and don't worry too much.
 
Those magnets inside the hard drive make pretty good keychain holders for your fridge :)
 
South_Bit said:
It does happen over time, the magnetic surface deteriorates slowly and the problem gets worse as time goes by. The drive will remap these sectors though, so it shouldn't affect the integrity of your data. You used the term 'weak sectors' so I assume you are seeing this with HDD Sentinel?

There's a nice free piece of software called MHDD. You can do a full scan of your drive and enable the remap feature, it will remap any bad or slow sectors. The drive should be connected directly to the SATA port of the machine though when you run the test, and the data be backed up.

Have a look at the SMART values to get a rough idea of the drive's health. Irrespective of whether or not you have 1, none, or 500 bad/weak sectors, the drive could continue to function just fine for the next 10 years, or it could fail completely tomorrow. Backup your important data and don't worry too much.
Click to expand...

Yeah HDD Sentinel...that's it. I will give that software a shot thanks.
I'm just dissapointed because it's about 6-8 months old and already giving sheet. My biggest issue is i don't have any other hd's to back up to! I only have a laptop and this external.
about a month or so ago my external 500 gb completely crashed so i backed up all data to this,my last external. I think i should just stop collecting nonsense and burn all the important stuff to dvd's and ask a mate to keep a backup for my stuff.
 
If it's seagate drives, make sure their firmwares are up to date & Fix/recover bad sectors using Seatools -> burn iso to CD/DVD, boot from disk and do the long scan. Takes a couple of hours (leave it overnight). When it reports errors on the drive, just tell it to fix everything.
If you're using ACHI, make sure your system ACHI/SATA drivers are up to date.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X