harddisk Constantly increasing bad sectors.

[jarpit96]

My laptop hard disk shows increasing bad sectors.

Specifications:

• Laptop: Compaq 15 Notebook PC (J8B65PA#ACJ)
• Hard Disk: HGST HTS545050A7 (500GB)
• OS: Ubuntu 16.04 64bit

I use the disks program in Ubuntu to see bad sectors in my disk. I recorded the number of bad sectors: 

• 589896 bad sectors : Wed May 17 22:33:05 IST 2017
• 655440 bad sectors : Wed May 24 21:38:26 IST 2017
• 983160 bad sectors : Thu Jul 13 22:28:08 IST 2017

Is this a reason for worry?

The smart analysis tool shows "Threshold not exceeded" and "Disk is OK, 983160 bad sectors".

[Guest]

Yes, it's going down. You should back-up and have a new one standing by. (maybe clone it already) If you don't want to deal with an broken HDD during work, you should replace it soonish.