Do HDD suddenly become unallocated ?

[pomkon]

I have this not so healthy HDD, reallocated sector count cation status(crystal disk info), i left it in the corner some time ago. Now it shows up as reallocated (not formatted) in windows disk management. I knew there were problems with this hdd, so I moved the data to another healthy offline backup hdd, the healthy disk had the data I want. 

 

However there was no reason to format the disk (in case the healthy backup fails), Im not sure if i really format it before or not. Is it possible that an unhealthy disk can become reallocated itself?

[kjroland75]

Hi pomkon,

I had this problem before, and so I followed this Youtube video. I had to restart my PC about 3 times (at most), and then the hard drives showed up.

[Kedohawyr]

Is this right?

• CrystalDisk reported the drive had reallocated sectors
• You smartly backed up all the data to a healthy drive and unplugged the bad drive
• Now you want to use the drive again but when you plug it in Windows says the drive is unallocated

First it is indeed possible for an unhealthy drive to come up as unallocated, simply rebooting could have been enough to knock out or expose damage to a critical sector containing some of the formatting information that Windows needs to know how the drive is arranged which results in it being reported as unallocated.

 

Second is that it's my rule of thumb that if a modern harddrive is reporting reallocated sectors (meaning sectors on the disk have physically stopped working and the drive controller was forced to utilize one of the small number of backup sectors at the end of the drive) then you should discontinue use of that drive as soon as you've backed up any files you want.

 

Thanks to the reliability of today's harddrives I've found that more than one reallocated sector is almost a sure sign that there is a persistent problem with the read head or other component which means that more sectors will continue to fail/be damaged if you keep using the drive which means you will lose more and more data until the drive becomes unreadable (which it sounds like it has or nearly has happened already).

[pomkon]

1 hour ago, Kedohawyr said:

Is this right?

• CrystalDisk reported the drive had reallocated sectors
• You smartly backed up all the data to a healthy drive and unplugged the bad drive
• Now you want to use the drive again but when you plug it in Windows says the drive is unallocated

First it is indeed possible for an unhealthy drive to come up as unallocated, simply rebooting could have been enough to knock out or expose damage to a critical sector containing some of the formatting information that Windows needs to know how the drive is arranged which results in it being reported as unallocated.

 

Second is that it's my rule of thumb that if a modern harddrive is reporting reallocated sectors (meaning sectors on the disk have physically stopped working and the drive controller was forced to utilize one of the small number of backup sectors at the end of the drive) then you should discontinue use of that drive as soon as you've backed up any files you want.

 

Thanks to the reliability of today's harddrives I've found that more than one reallocated sector is almost a sure sign that there is a persistent problem with the read head or other component which means that more sectors will continue to fail/be damaged if you keep using the drive which means you will lose more and more data until the drive becomes unreadable (which it sounds like it has or nearly has happened already).

Im just not sure whether i did format it myself or not. If i didnt format it, i want to see what was on it. I left it in the corner for some time so i dont remember.