HDD at 52%, what to do?

[seiny]

I do indeed. I currently work for a local Public Library as one of their IT Techs.

Oh cool, I'm currently studying Comptia A+

[dalekphalm]

Oh cool, I'm currently studying Comptia A+

I personally never bothered with getting my A+. It's always been something in the back of my mind to get "eventually". Experience is vastly the most important thing to have in this industry. A+ will help you get in the door though.

[H4X3R]

Erm, defragging it will literally do nothing to help with bad sectors. There is literally no point to running a defrag to help him.

 

@H3X3R in the short term, open Command Prompt and run:

chkdsk /r

This will scan your HDD for bad sectors and attempt to remap any remaining spare sectors.

 

Additionally, if you do a "Full" format of the HDD, it will do the same thing.

 

But this will not "Fix" the existing bad sectors, it will just remap them to spare sectors (if available) or mark them as "bad" and will tell Windows to pretend those sectors don't exist.

 

However, once bad sectors start appearing, it's a warning sign that the drive is toast soon.

 

You said that the drive is a few months old, and you also said that your friend gave you the HDD. Was it new when he gave it to you? Where'd he get it from? How long did he have it before giving it to you? As long as he's had it less than one year, and will be back from New York before that one year period expires, then wait for him to come back and get him to help you RMA the drive.

 

However, I would check with the manufacturer first. Some of them only require the Serial Number for validation of warranty. You may not even need to provide a receipt. I would recommend checking this out ASAP.

Thanks for the info