Seagate HDD - Good or Bad?

[Geforcer]

Few weeks ago, I had a partition on the drive that the file system got corrupt. I had to use software to recover the data, which I was fortunate to recover about 98% of the data. I shrugged it off, and just reformated the partition, and began using it again. Well, this weekend, I noticed alot of errors in my Event Viewer. "The device, \Device\Harddisk2\D, has a bad block." So, I ran 3 different hard drive utilities on it, and all reported it bad seconds after I'd start the test. Not even thinking, I just called it in and got a RMA for it. Well, tonight I started pulling my data I needed off of it, and wiped out both partitions to get it ready to send off. After doing so, out of curiosity, I ran another test on the drive. It Passed! So I'm now running a few more tests on it to verify this finding. Then I'm going to recreate the partitions, format, and run some more tests. But just curious, from a 2nd opinion, Is the drive still good or should I still worry about it doing this same thing again later on down the road? Thanks

PS, Will post more after running more tests.

 

[John]

If it were my drive I would still RMA it.

 

[Varun]

Originally posted by: John
If it were my drive I would still RMA it.

if it gives you grief get rid of it before it dies completely.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

RMA when in doubt. Copy your data first though.

Working on a bad hard drive is an invitation for disaster. You could crash anytime in the future and be gg pwned. Don't take any risks. I tried living for 6 months on a bad IBM Deskstar. Formatted at least 20 times in that period.... You should see my sophomore yr's MY Documents. There are like gaps. 8/30 - 9/15 and then gap for like 2 weeks due to a bad format and then m ore documents... gap.... many My Documents - Backup(1/2/3/4/5) folders.... yea. Don't get caught up in that.

 

[Geforcer]

Well, do you think they'll take it now since it doesn't show any signs of being bad? I guess this is one of those times when a fix isn't a good thing It does seem to be working though. I'm going to copy a bunch of large files to it and try to fill it up, and see if any turn out bad. Will post up my findings later on. Thanks

 

[Geforcer]

ok, remade the partitions, and ran a file system and partition check, and it comes up with "Minor Errors", but then says it's not errors to worry about. More testing......

 

[imported_Kensai]

RMA.

 

[wpshooter]

Originally posted by: Geforcer
So, I ran 3 different hard drive utilities on it, and all reported it bad seconds after I'd start the test.

What drive utilities did you run ?

Have you tried Gibson Research's Spinrite 6 ?

If Spinrite 6 says it is bad or good, you can pretty much count of it.

Good luck.

 

[Geforcer]

Originally posted by: wpshooter

What drive utilities did you run ?

Have you tried Gibson Research's Spinrite 6 ?

If Spinrite 6 says it is bad or good, you can pretty much count of it.

Good luck.

I ran the Western Digital Diagnostics tool, Seagate Online tool, and some tool off of a boot utilities cd. Will try that program to test it out next.

 

[simms]

Seagates are awesome - they come with a 3-5 yr warranty as well. RMA it.

 

[Geforcer]

Well, got my final answer. I made 2 partitions on the drive, and filled 1 up with junk. All was fine. When I tried to copy all the stuff from partition 1 to partition 2, I started getting more Bad Block errors in event viewer, and CRC errors that bombed out the xfer. Guess I'm RMA'ing the beast

 

[Mickey21]

As mentioned, quit messing with it and just RMA it. No sense in worrying about it. The error will likely show up again...