disable bad sectors on HDD ???

G

game14

[H]ard|Gawd
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I got a 2TB WD external HDD. Started failing after 2 years of use. Checkdisc reported a lot of corrupted and bad sectors on the drive, not to mention the data was basically gone, trying to copy the data only caused systemfreeze, so i decided to reformat the drive.
My question is, is there any easy way to disable the bad part of the hdd and still use the good sectors ??
 
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Writing to bad sectors causes the drive to remap them to spare sectors. A full format (not quick) would normally be sufficient. If the drive stops doing that means it has probably run out of spare sectors. At this point one would generally stop using the drive. You could create an unused partition spanning all bad sectors to block access to them, but I would rather buy a new drive.

Can you post the smart data? It could give a better impression on the drive's condition.
 
ok back to business, the drive shows constantly smart is not supported. Cant read any data using seagate and WD tools. In those tools it shows it passed but if i try to run any test it fails. Using stablebit scanner it shows everything according to manufacturer specifications but i cant run any further tests.
Quick format is working but if i try the other options it fails to format.
So i guess the drive is brick ?
or any tools i could use to work around ?
 
It's gone, man. Just let it go. You've gone from beating a dead horse to cooking it for dinner.
 
the top sticky on this sub forum should say "a breaking drive is broken", or "bad sectors means its dead"
 
If the damage is localised, then as omniscence said, you can "map" that area out using partitions.

Running a disk scan under HDTune (free version) will give you a good idea of how to set up the partitions - it does a sequential scan of the drive and basically tells you where the damage is.

If the bad sectors are spread all over the disk - bin it!!!
 
External as in connected via USB? or eSata?

USB transmission errors or even SATA transmission errors (like the ones one would get with some quirky 1st gen controller) can cause filesystem corruption and/or a 'current pending sector > 0' count in SMART data.
I've seen this happen with a 750g WD green drive on a very old Epox board.
I've read somewhere [citation needed, lol] that pending sectors are the ones that can eventually become 'reallocated sectors' if they are found to be truly faulty.
With my epox problem, all SMART errors were cleared after running the manufacturers diagnostic tool. It did a full media scan with WD diag, it told me 'drive was repaired' and the disk worked fine for another six months. Funny enough, 'current pending sectors' was zeroed and there was no increase of 'reallocated sectors'.
After the old epox mainboard was finally retired (the client was fed up with losing windows every 6 months - and the WD drive was the 3rd drive exhibiting errors on that mobo) the problem disappeared with it and I haven't had another call.
The sata controller was so old it wouldn't even downshift to SATA1 for newer drives - remained invisible until pins 5 and 6 (?) on the WD HDD were jumped.
So, all in all, you should maybe check that external drive on another computer for a while. Wiggle the cable a bit, clean contacts...
The best way of confirming would probably involve prying the drive from the enclosure and connecting it directly to a mainboard port and then running some diagnostic tool like MHDD or WD's tools.
 
External as in USB. Its a WD external 2TB HDD.
Yes i opened the case already and took the HDD out. WD green drive.
I connected another HDD i had laying around to the controller and had problems to access the drive. Constant freeze, drive not found, connect to different faster USB port and so on. So the controllerboard from the case is aparently gone.
I tried out another Sata to USB board i got from another WD external drive and worked fine so far and run the test posted earlier.
Then I connected the HDD out of the case directly to a Sata port on mobo and im working from there on. I couldnt recover any data though.
I scanned with WD diagnostic tool...smart pass, but failed all test.
With Seagate tools same result.
With stablebit scanner (free version for 30 days) i scanned it completly (it took forever to do so) and got the result smart passed, 278 bad sectors, everything "green" according to manufactorer specifications.
No surface damage found.
Quickformat possible, other options are not, drive fails.
Gonna scan with HDtune and see whats the result there.
 
Sounds like you were pretty thorough.
You can try using Testdisk or Photorec to pick up whatever files are left on the platters, some will be corrupted, a lot of dupes and no filenames. Those tools are pretty filesystem agnostic. Recuva preserves filenames but I can't remember if if can read corrupted partitions.
Anyway, if WD's tools fail and don't 'repair' the drive after a full surface scan then I guess not much can be done.

However, as a last resort, instead of HDTune, I'd play around with the powerful MHDD, it's available on hiren's boot cds and such. Motherboard SATA connection required.

In it, you can type 'smart att' to view your smart data (check for reallocated and pending sectors).
Then you would type in the 'scan' command to find some bad sectors, stop, and re-run 'scan' to see if they pop up on the same addresses. That alone can help discern connection/head/electronics damage from platter damage.
The 'scan' command also has a 'scan with remap' option which might do what you mentioned in the OP - reallocate bad sectors. May destroy whatever's left of your data!
There's also an 'erase' command which zeroes the drive, which may or may not fix your issues.

Have a look at the drive itself, any heat damage? connectors ok?
 
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