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Bad sectors on HDD, do I just replace the drive?

Rxd
By Rxd
in Storage Devices
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This is the first post on the issue https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/1073153-my-hdd-is-having-serious-issue if you want to read the whole story!

Basically my drive(WD Black 2TB) has bad sectors that even WD LifeGuard can't fix -> https://imgur.com/a/nLzosDv . It is still covered by the 5 years warranty and all the information that was important for me was already moved to my main drive. Do I just go and get a new one or I can still do something or it's not worth trying?

 

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23 minutes ago, Rxd said:

This is the first post on the issue https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/1073153-my-hdd-is-having-serious-issue if you want to read the whole story!

Basically my drive(WD Black 2TB) has bad sectors that even WD LifeGuard can't fix -> https://imgur.com/a/nLzosDv . It is still covered by the 5 years warranty and all the information that was important for me was already moved to my main drive. Do I just go and get a new one or I can still do something or it's not worth trying?

You could do an ATA Secure Erase on it, which will completely wipe everything on the drive and, depending on the drive's firmware and how many bad sectors there are, cause it to reallocate the bad sectors to the spare-area on the drive. If the drive is actually about to fail, then that won't fix it, but if the drive isn't failing, an ATA Secure Erase would possibly let you continue to use it for years to come. I do this myself as well -- if I have a drive with a few bad sector, I do secure erase on it, and if the drive still continues to have bad sectors or I see more bad sectors appear on it over time, I'll toss it.

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Use spinrite. its a bootable OS. it will take hours to complete, and will not affect files on the drive. it will check every sector of the drive, and tell the drive to never write on the bad ones as it could lose files.

 

yes it was first created in 2004, but it still works great.

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54 minutes ago, Rxd said:

t is still covered by the 5 years warranty and all the information that was important for me was already moved to my main drive. 

 

If you ask me, just replace it. If it's free, why waste time and effort on a "will maybe work, probably not as good as new though" (unless it's for fiddling around with it)

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Dumb question but how do I keep an eye on how many bad sectors there are?

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1 hour ago, Rxd said:

It is still covered by the 5 years warranty and all the information that was important for me was already moved to my main drive. Do I just go and get a new one or I can still do something or it's not worth trying?

since everything is being backup, you could try rma the drive.

Or just keep using it

I am currently running OS on a bad drive 30% health and many bad sectors ... still fine 

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@dgsddfgdfhgs The thing is, even if I want to use it I can't, it has 2 main purposes - installing games and keeping photos/videos/etc. About games I can't install them, every time I try installing a steam title, I just get an error almost immediately and then I have to restart my pc to be able to access stuff on the drive. And about photos/etc. I tried putting a random video, I was able to watch it but then the drive again turned into that state where I can't use it properly so I had to restart the system and the video was gone! So technically I can't use the drive!

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@WereCatf I installed HD sentinal few minutes ago and it said that there are 8 bad sectors and the health is still at an excellent rate. Could you provide me with an article on how to do an ATA Secure Erase. I might as well try it. Also isn't that a different way to say to format the drive or there are differences?

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@starcoaster Late reply but all the data that I cared was moved to my main drive, as the majority of the space was used for games so it was just like 10gb that I had to move. Anyway yesterday I tried formating the drive and somehow the drive started the process and it gave me an error saying that it can't complete the formating?!??? No clue how and why, and I am getting it for RMA soon enough hoping that they just swap it. I could only guess that something on the mechanical part of the drive got "fuked" because 8-10 bad sectors first of all aren't that bad nor would cause such issues.

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@starcoaster dumb question but would they need the rest of the pc or only the drive would be enough?

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I might go to the place personally, that's why I am asking

 

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