Laptops HDD damaged..what to do?

hi guys..need some advice as i am not aware of how to assess hdd damage.


my laptop had an accident yesterday... it underwent a 1 feet free fall while i was downloading smthg (the laptop stand broke )

during this fall the power cord also came off and since i was not running it on battery the entire laptop shut off.

so while the HDD was being used...it got a big shock and at the same time its power went off.


i ran a HDD test using HD Tune and results as follows:





already i am noticing some folders are corrupt around the location where files were being downloaded..

and i am getting I/0 error messages while using uTorrent



so is there anything other than replacing HDD?

 

Back up your things.. because the condition of your hard drive will probably worsen if there has been a head crash..
You could try a low-level format.. but don't even remotely know if that would improve the situation with your hard drive..

 

backup your file;

do a disk check.

my computer -> select HDD then right click -> properties -> tools -> hdd check.

there should be a force re-check option in utorrent. right click on the corrupt file -> force re-check. basically, this will check the file for any corrupt/missing parts and re-download them.

not sure if replacing a hdd is necessary, but you want to backup your file regularly (i know i do). the hdd would move bad sector automatically. no need to do a low-level format. however, if the head crash scratch the platter, you might need to buy a new hdd.

if you have a diagnostic utility that comes with your laptop, you might want to use that.

check the SMART status, if after a while it still shows OK, then no replacement necessary.

 

thanks...anyway i am planning to move out this laptop..


so hope it ll last me atleast 6 months more.


will back it up on 500 GB external HDD at night.


is there software to backup entire Drive automatically?

 

hey i tried force re-check in uTorrent..

but every few mins i get the same error message.

its like that location on HDD is spoilt.

what to do?

 

Ran chkdsk ?

 

A 1 foot drop is HUGE for a hard drive that is powered on and is running (transmitting data). The arm or reader thingy on the arm probably touched the platters. Back up your data as soon as you can and buy a new hard drive.

 

Agreed. A new HD is pretty cheap these days.

 

if your harddrive is under warranty, you can replace the harddrive. Are you sure that you didnt have any dead sectors before the fall?
I know I had a old laptop with a IBM/Hitachi harddrive in it, and over about 4 years it started developing dead sectors by itself. The laptop never fell, and was never moved while on. I am just saying that the dead sectors may be a coincidence. I used my drive for over 2 years and the drive still works, it just has one bad sector.
Check your smart reading in the hdtune health tab. If anything is highlighted in red or yellow, its time to replace the drive, either through warranty, or through your replacing it.

K-TRON

 

buy new one

or you can try backing up everything and reformating the drive, where it can mark the bad sectors and not use those latel. But still ..

 

I won't quote #9

But K-TRON, sure, if he'd have a fool-safe warranty! Warranty doesn't cover clumpsyness/user misstakes!
It's kind of not a coincidence when the HDD shows alot of errors right after the drop!

 

Did you read what I wrote?
My harddrive generated bad sectors and it never fell.
Maybe his drive also had bad sectors before the fall
I cant confirm if it did or not, because I do not own the harddrive.
But if their were bad sectors before the fall, the drive would be repairable under the warranty
If the drive did not have bad sectors before the fall, than the warranty does not cover this.

K-TRON

 

Useless info, here goes. Unless your HDD is from the 80's Low Level Formatting is likely not an option. Since the mid 90's almost all LLF is done at the factory and is not possible for end user. See I told you useless.

I can only guess what is meant by LLF above is reinitialization?

I am with the "back up your data" suggestions. And you might get 6 months no problem.

 

Yeah i read what you wrote.

A HDD will most definately generate bad sectors (if you're lucky enough it survives) when it gets dropped.

A HDD can also generate bad sectors because of age, as in your case. It's as normal as when it gets dropped while on power.
And he'd definately notice if it had bad sectors before as he noticed this

after the drop.
Otherwise he would have noticed that before the drop.
So the evidence is crystal clear here as the corrupted files are where he downloaded the files and that utorrent shows I/O errors (and this happened when he dropped it).

 

Drop it even more and see if it really did cause the bad blocks

 

I just looked up your model of harddrive. I had the 160gb model of the Seagate 5400.3 series in my Dell E1505 before upgrading to the Hitachi 7K320.
I never had any problems with my Seagate drive, actually was the only seagate drive I ever had which lasted more than a year. I never dropped mine, but I can say the performance of the drive is pretty subpar these days. It was only able to do 35mb/sec or so, so you may want to get a cheap replacement harddrive for it.

Michel.K does have a point in his last post, and it sounds like the head smacked against the platter during the fall, creating those bad sectors.

I know on my old Hitachi drive i ran it for over 2 years with I think three corrupt data sectors, and I only had troubles when loading files after I used more than about 25gb of the 40gb capacity.
So I just kept my file usage at less than 20gb, and my drive never hiccuped again even though it had a few bad spots.

K-TRON

 

the laptop is suddenly freezing in between when accessing certain parts of HDD.. and many times while transferring files it shows I/O Errors.

i think its time i backup as much as possible and change it but some problems.

will HP install Vista for me? i dont have all the drivers and OS installation CD.

 

Get a new hard drive. Data is more important IMHO. Did you have to make recovery CD/DVDs off a recovery partition?