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Bad cluster in new HDD

B

bobsmith1492

Diamond Member
Update: I received a new drive today.

What is the best practice to check out a new hard drive? I'm going to start with a full format and then a chkdsk.


Hi all,

I just bought a 2TB Western Digital drive. I was doing a Windows backup when it failed because of a bad cluster. I did a chkdsk and it too found and marked a bad cluster.

Is this a bad sign on a brand new drive? Is it common on large drives? I've never before seen a bad cluster on a dozen drives I've had. Should I be worried about the drive?
 
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bobsmith1492 said:
Hi all,

I just bought a 2TB Western Digital drive. I was doing a Windows backup when it failed because of a bad cluster. I did a chkdsk and it too found and marked a bad cluster.

Is this a bad sign on a brand new drive? Is it common on large drives? I've never before seen a bad cluster on a dozen drives I've had. Should I be worried about the drive?
Click to expand...

It's a bad sign on any drive. The drive itself has a number of sectors that it uses to transparently remap bad sectors that it finds, if you see a bad sector that means the drive has run out of spares. And usually where there's 1 there's more to follow.
 
yup its junk.

why i usually stretch out a new drive by formatting (long) and loading a good bit of data on it. the long format tends to get a good initial remap. the loading up of data; well if any fatal errors like bad sector happen. return it - no rma within the return period for being defective.
 
Return the drive.

I've lost two of eight brand new 1.5TB WD Greens this week at 36 and 70 hours of use respectively. Those drives are certainly going back. Today I bought more Hitachi's 🙂 With ~30 drives going into the new WHS, I know these things happen. Just don't play with drives that have bad sectors. Hoping that the drive is not really bad is not a safe way to treat your data.
 
I've never seen bad spots on a new hard drive and the only time I see them on older drives is when the drive is failing. Every time I've tried to "fix" the drive it's come back to bite me at some point in the future. Sometimes the next day and sometimes a year later. When you start seeing disk errors, it's time to replace the disk, unless you really don't care about the computer.
 
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Download the free SeaTools HDD software & do a long analysis. If it is just a bad cluster, then Seatools will provide for remapping.

You could also try "WIPE" (clears the drive by writing zeros to all areas) then do a long reformat. I fixed a 300GB Maxtor just recently that way which is working out fine.
 
Alright, thank you all for the advice. I will replace it. Thanks C1 but I don't want to deal with a drive that may have issues.
 
I received a new drive today.

What is the best practice to check out a new hard drive? I'm going to start with a full format and then a chkdsk.
 
I usually just do the "Extended Test" with the WD Lifeguard software. That and listening for clicking. Otherwise, afterward I just quick-format.

Then it's just being overly sensitive in the first 48 hours, and then 1st month. Assuming nothing happens (clicking or slow behavior) your drive is good.
 
I put the disk in an eSATA docking station and run a "Chdksk /r" from Windows. Any errors or any strange noises would be cause for return.
 
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