Can this hard drive be saved?

[Jsalpha2]

I'm using this as a storage drive for backing up music and photos. Should I run some magic hard drive repair software? Thanks in advance.

 

[Ultima99]

You should back up any critical data right now. Don't wait.

 

[knowpantsdance]

No, it can't be saved. Back up your data, and RMA if it's still in warranty.

 

[Dreamerbydesign]

Backup asap. That drive is dying fast.

 

[drescherjm]

There is 1 single bad sector. It can run for years like that as long as the # of bad sectors is not growing each day.. Although I would backup the disk and test the drive.

 

[phis6]

Definitely back-up your data and run MHDD on that drive.

 

[SirMaster]

Some people are overreacting...

Backup your data, sure it's always a good idea.

But your drive has 1 single reallocated sector. Your drive has hundreds of spare sectors dedicated for this exact reason.

As long as reallocated sectors is not continuously increasing it's fine.

I have a drive with 16 reallocated sectors. It got them 3 years ago and yet the drive still works perfectly fine and it's still at 16 today.

There is nothing to repair, the drive already repaired itself by reallocating a bad sector to the spare sectors part of the drive like it's designed to do.

 

[Dreamerbydesign]

Some people are overreacting...

Backup your data, sure it's always a good idea.

But your drive has 1 single reallocated sector. Your drive has hundreds of spare sectors dedicated for this exact reason.

As long as reallocated sectors is not continuously increasing it's fine.

I have a drive with 16 reallocated sectors. It got them 3 years ago and yet the drive still works perfectly fine and it's still at 16 today.

There is nothing to repair, the drive already repaired itself by reallocating a bad sector to the spare sectors part of the drive like it's designed to do.

And I had a drive that had two and died within a week. All experiences are different.

OP-back it up and don't save anything to it you aren't willing to lose. That's not a ever reaction.

 

[SirMaster]

And I had a drive that had two and died within a week. All experiences are different.

OP-back it up and don't save anything to it you aren't willing to lose. That's not a ever reaction.

Did it die with just 2 or did it get a bunch more before it died?

Having a couple reallocated sectors is not what causes a HDD to die, it's how and why it got them which causes it to die.

If they are a result of small surface defects in the platter then it's fine since the sectors can be remapped to a different section of the platter where the extra spare sectors are and the defective sectors can be marked as bad and never touched again.

If it's due to electromagnetical failures in the HDD itself like something in the reading head then it will soon cause a HDD failure.

I'm just saying you can't look at 1 reallocated sector and make the conclusion the drive is "dying fast".

 

[drescherjm]

I'm just saying you can't look at 1 reallocated sector and make the conclusion the drive is "dying fast".

Totally agreed. At work I currently have a dozen or so drives with > 0 reallocated sectors. One with 648. I watch them (with nagios like all my other drives in my servers) but since the # of reallocated sectors on these drives is not increasing at all it is not a real problem.

I have also dozens of times seen drives die. I have done 75+ RMAs. In most cases when a drive has died for me the reallocated sectors grows rapidly over a period of days to weeks.

 

[Jsalpha2]

Thanks , I just discovered this when I was moving stuff to this drive from another drive that was going bad. I am going to order a new drive and empty both of the EIDE drives onto it. Both of the caution drives are old style drives. Once they are empty I may try the MHDD on them. A couple of interesting quotes from the MHDD FAQ.

Q: I'm checking my disk with chkdsk or scandisk and they are reporting bads, but MHDD does not see any bad block. What happened?
A: Your drive had some bad blocks in the past and they were removed by MHDD or other software (or sometimes by the hard drive itself).
1. Use DiskEdit to remove bads from your file system
2. Try Partition Magic's "Bad sectors recheck"
3. Repartition your hard drive.

Q: Does MHDD Scan+remap kill my data?
A: Remapping with MHDD is safe to your data as long as you have not too much bad blocks (under 100).

Once they are empty maybe the can be fixed and be put back in use?

 

[drescherjm]

Once they are empty maybe the can be fixed and be put back in use?

If they are remapped they are already fixed. Remapped means a sector from the spare pool has replaced the bad sector. As far as the OS is concerned there are no bad sectors.