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    Can I assume this 7200.10 HDD is a goner?

    Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by ajreynol, May 13, 2009.

  1. ajreynol

    ajreynol Notebook Virtuoso

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    was using this as external storage for my notebook, but I've started noticing it acting...funny. no noises, but sometimes it wouldn't transfer files properly...and it would get finicky about how it was placed (vertical, horizontal, angles). and it has certainly felt much slower than it used to be.

    ran an HDTune health test and...

    [​IMG]

    time to get my data off and put her on the scrap heap?
     
    ajreynol, May 13, 2009
    #1
  2. namaiki

    namaiki "basically rocks" Super Moderator

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    I would...

    any bad sectors that show up like that are a no no in my book.
     
    namaiki, May 13, 2009
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  3. catacylsm

    catacylsm Notebook Prophet

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    What if he backed up and then rewrite the HDD with complete zero format ( i know sony disks have that options as i have a fe21s)
     
    catacylsm, May 13, 2009
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  4. newsposter

    newsposter Notebook Virtuoso

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    'formats' on disk drives rarely do anything these days. The low/platter level format is factory fixed. If you don't have the factory tools, all you are doing is refreshing the local filesystem (NTFS, XFS, JFS, whatever).

    It's been a quite a few years since an end-user format was able to actually touch the real recording surfaces of a hard drive.

    Remember too that all disk drives have bad sectors from the factory. These are taken care of with the factory format and the provision for a boatload of spare sectors. When the drive firmware sees a new bad sector crop up, the old sector is recovered to one of the spares and a map/redirector is put in place. All of this is invisible to the user. When bad sectors start to show up on user programs (like HD Tune), it generally means that the supply of spare sectors is exhausted and the drive has nowhere to copy data from newly discovered bad sectors.

    So when a drive starts to visibly accumulate bad sectors, it's time to replace it.

    A 7200.10 should still be within the 3 year consumer warranty anyway.
     
    newsposter, May 13, 2009
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  5. Ayle

    Ayle Trailblazer

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    That wouldn't do anything as more often than not the bad sector are area of the disk that are physically damaged. It would be a good idea to do a chkdsk so that the is can isolate the bad sectors. But from the other symptoms who described I'd say. Backup and be prepared to a disk failure.
     
    Ayle, May 13, 2009
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  6. catacylsm

    catacylsm Notebook Prophet

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    Aha, thanks Ayle, and yeah, better back up before you loose it all, dam failures suck sometimes.

    Cant he split the damaged sectors off with say, partition splitter?
     
    catacylsm, May 13, 2009
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  7. avanish11

    avanish11 Panda! ^_^

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    I'd say so. Back-up that drive before it goes KABOOM.

    Catacylsm: that wouldn't do anything. Hard drive sectors go bad all the time, which is why they have spare sectors, so no data is lost. Here, all the spare sectors are used up, so the hard drive has nothing to replace the bad sectors. If he would just chop off the bad sectors, more would just crop up sooner or later.
     
    avanish11, May 13, 2009
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  8. ajreynol

    ajreynol Notebook Virtuoso

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    all data moved off the drive. I'll probably dump it and put a new drive in the enclosure.

    not worth it to me to use a drive that is telling me I can't count on it.
     
    ajreynol, May 13, 2009
    #8