90 bad sectors, but still working. Should I trash this HD?

[MichaelD]

Normally, HDs either work or they're dead. And then you get the oddballs. I have a 5-year old Samsung FJ501 or something like that. 500GB, 7200rpm SATA II drive. There is no tick of death and it seems to function normally. But running a SMART check on it revealed 90 bad sectors. But the drive still works. Obviously, putting mission critical data on this drive would be dumb, but for testing use it should be fine, right? Or should I just trash the thing?

 

[DominionSeraph]

Could've just been a momentary head crash at some point, so it could be fine.

 

[AnitaPeterson]

Would reformatting it and/or running HDD Regenerator on it do the trick?

 

[MichaelD]

Would reformatting it and/or running HDD Regenerator on it do the trick?

Well, I ran DBan on it using the DoD wipe method and the bad sectors are still there. It's difficult for me to throw hardware away, especially when it's still working. Like I said, there's no "tick of death" so it SEEMS to be fine. It may just last for another 5 years.

 

[DominionSeraph]

If it survived that without adding any more bad sectors, it's probably not progressive.

 

[Torn Mind]

Use some scanner program to find where the bad sectors are. Then partition up the drive so that you keep the bad sectors in partitions separate from ones in the good partitions. The magnetic medium in the disk is probably losing its magnetism. More bad sectors will start popping up. It's only a matter of when.

 

[Binky]

Ignore the doomsayers. Its very easy for people to forecast the end of the world without evidence.

I've used drives with bad sectors for years. Some drives show a slow increase in the bad sectors, others stay about the same for many years. I have an old 1TB drive in a WHS box that has has had a few hundred bad sectors for about 4 years - it developed these when it was only a few months old. The damned thing has at least 35,000 hours on it and it still runs like a champ.

Just keep a good backup and check the drive occasionally. Going without a backup on a drive without bad sectors is a bad idea. On a drive with bad sectors, its still a bad idea.

 

[Torn Mind]

Ignore the doomsayers. Its very easy for people to forecast the end of the world without evidence.

I've used drives with bad sectors for years. Some drives show a slow increase in the bad sectors, others stay about the same for many years. I have an old 1TB drive in a WHS box that has has had a few hundred bad sectors for about 4 years - it developed these when it was only a few months old. The damned thing has at least 35,000 hours on it and it still runs like a champ.

Just keep a good backup and check the drive occasionally. Going without a backup on a drive without bad sectors is a bad idea. On a drive with bad sectors, its still a bad idea.

My sister tossed a then-new netbook real hard. Ruined a bunch of sectors in the inner portion of the disk and destroyed Windows, but the rest of the drive had good sectors so I could at least use Linux.

 

[Drako]

Do you know how many spare sectors does that drive has. 90 bad sectors seems pretty small to me.

90 sectors is only 45 KB.

 

[mvbighead]

Should be able to mark them as bad with something, and use it for testing as you suggested. I'd run a few checks over several months to see if it gets worse.

 

[wirednuts]

i wish we didnt have to talk about spindle drives anymore... im getting impatient with the ssd market, even though it is progressing.

 

[mfenn]

Use some scanner program to find where the bad sectors are. Then partition up the drive so that you keep the bad sectors in partitions separate from ones in the good partitions. The magnetic medium in the disk is probably losing its magnetism. More bad sectors will start popping up. It's only a matter of when.

Would reformatting it and/or running HDD Regenerator on it do the trick?

These techniques don't work on reasonable modern drives like the OP's. That's because new drives transparently remap bad blocks from a dedicated spare pool.

 

[paul878]

I would replace a hd if it even have 1 bad block.
By the time you can detect a bad block, all the spares had been used up.

 

[Charles Kozierok]

Is your data worth more than 50 bucks? Because that's at most what a replacement for that drive is worth.

I can't believe people here are actually suggesting that you keep using it.

ETA: If you're really just using it for "testing" (not sure what that means) and you are comfortable with the idea that everything on it could be lost at any time with no warning, then fine. Otherwise, junk it.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Is your data worth more than 50 bucks? Because that's at most what a replacement for that drive is worth.

I can't believe people here are actually suggesting that you keep using it.

ETA: If you're really just using it for "testing" (not sure what that means) and you are comfortable with the idea that everything on it could be lost at any time with no warning, then fine. Otherwise, junk it.

I see that as SOP when using a SandForce SSD, and plenty of people do that, so I don't see that as a problem (using that HDD).

 

[bononos]

Ignore the doomsayers. Its very easy for people to forecast the end of the world without evidence.

I've used drives with bad sectors for years. Some drives show a slow increase in the bad sectors, others stay about the same for many years. I have an old 1TB drive in a WHS box that has has had a few hundred bad sectors for about 4 years - it developed these when it was only a few months old. The damned thing has at least 35,000 hours on it and it still runs like a champ.

Just keep a good backup and check the drive occasionally. Going without a backup on a drive without bad sectors is a bad idea. On a drive with bad sectors, its still a bad idea.

If the sector reallocated count stays the same instead of increasing, the drive could be ok for general use. I had a drive which had the sector realloc count go up (from default 0) probably due to overheating but did not get worse and seemed to work fine for >5yrs after some airflow adjustments. Another harddisk which overheated in the same incident wasn't so lucky and kept increasing sector reallocated counts and I junked it soon after.

 

[pmv]

Should have titled the thread "I got 90 bad sectors but my bits ain't gone"

 

[cubby1223]

I'm reminded back to the days of twenty years ago when I could take in a hard drive with 10% bad sectors and still resell it at half the new price!

But guess what, this is 2013!!!!!!!!

Hand that drive over to an electronics recycler. End of discussion.

 

[cubby1223]

Seriously, one bad sector hits the MFT and you're in for a world of hurt recovering data off the drive.

 

[cubby1223]

Go to the fs/t section of this forum, you can get comparable drives with no bad sectors for $20.

 

[RaistlinZ]

No sense in waiting until it does stop working. "An ounce of prevention..." as they say.

 

[jaydeee]

How about putting a back on that drive? which I actually do.

 

[cheez]

You can run deep scan on the drive and let it attempt to fix bad sectors. If the repair is unsuccessful then toss out the hard drive.

cheez

 

[MadScientist]

Drive manufacturers have their own diagnostic tools to repair bad sectors, if possible, i.e., Seagate's SeaTools, WD's Data Lifeguard. http://pcsupport.about.com/od/toolsofthetrade/tp/tophddiag.htm

I recently replaced a 500GB Seagate hard drive in a friend's laptop. SeaTool's bootable DOS version found 443 bad sectors and fixed (remapped) them, but I thought with that many bad sectors replacing it would be the better option then re-using it as the main drive.

But I am using it in an external hard drive enclosure and it's working fine.

OP,
Run the appropriate diagnostic tool and if it fixes (remaps) the bad sectors then keep the drive, but as you stated don't put mission critical data on it.

 

[paul878]

You can run deep scan on the drive and let it attempt to fix bad sectors. If the repair is unsuccessful then toss out the hard drive.

cheez

You CAN'T fix bad sectors, in the old day you can do a low level format and map out the bad sectors.