formatting a HD with bad sectors

[QueBert]

I know this is a sign the HD is on the verge of death, but I have to ship a drive back to WD on Monday. All I have to back up my files is HD that has some problems, I get the nice click of death. I formatted it thinking it would mark the sectors as bad, but when I ran Spinrite it wasn't showing any as bad. I didn't let SR run, I just thought it would show the sectors that format marked as bad as bad. Basically I want to use the good portions on it to store files for a couple of weeks till I can get a replace. Just toss the files on it, unplug it and not mess with it until I get the other drive.

 

[Modelworks]

Drives now mark the sectors as bad automatically so you might not see them in utilities.
SMART is supposed to keep track of the percentage of bad sectors, as all drives have some bad sectors.

Older drives used to require a low level format.

You should be fine using the drive like you suggested.

 

[QueBert]

but since they're marked shouldn't it not try to write to them? I was having some problems with that earlier hummm. But now that I think about my past experience a lot of times Click Of Death can be very random, so I guess there's really going to be no scientific method for me to assure I will be able to pull the data off down the road. Keeping my fingers crossed is about as good as I can hope for.