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Uncorrectable sector count

R

rumpleforeskin

Senior member
Hi

Had trouble copying a particular file from one of my drives earlier, the transfer would freeze during the copy operation. Running crystal disk info gives me a caution for the drive concerned.



Looks as though the drive has some bad sectors that have not been reallocated?
Assuming the count is static should I be concerned?
Going to copy the data off over night as a precaution.
 
rumpleforeskin said:
Looks as though the drive has some bad sectors that have not been reallocated?
Assuming the count is static should I be concerned?
Click to expand...
Note the pending sector count is the same (71?). That indicates that it's waiting for you to try to write data to those LBAs. Then, assuming it can, the pending will go away (possibly with an increase in reallocated sectors, of ot has to move them).
 
Time to get a new HD, and use this one as a scratch drive.
While it is true that you can keep using this drive, eventually, it will fail on you.
 
Elixer said:
Time to get a new HD, and use this one as a scratch drive.
While it is true that you can keep using this drive, eventually, it will fail on you.
Click to expand...

They ALL will fail. It's just a matter of when. I've had a WD green that kept working fine for about 3 years of regular use after a reallocation. The other 2 drives that I owned that came up with these errors failed within a matter of weeks/months.

Like Elixer said, it doesn't make them completely unusable, they just shouldn't be trusted with any critical storage. In situations like this, I check to make sure the reallocation of sectors goes smoothly. If it does then I usually move the drive out of normal use and stick them in an enclosure for mobile use, relegate them to doing backups of the "healthier" drives or like he said, use them as a scratch drive.
 
I have copied all the data off as a precaution, as the drive is still within its warranty period I will apply to RMA it. Though it will have to wait a couple of weeks as I will not be in to receive the replacement until the new year.

If it fails in the mean time I now have nothing to lose.
 
Years back I have fixed bad sectors using Spinrite but them drives had much smaller volumes and I imagine it would take forever to complete a Spinrite session on these new large volume HDD's.

Sometimes bad sectors are not necessarily damaged but is an unreadable Trojan that is corruped data and can't even be deleted.

Running Checkdisk within Windows can isolate bad sectors but only while mounted on that system.

I have isolated and partitioned around bad sectors on a HDD and labeled it Bad Sectors to remind me not to write to that area

A Disk Management Tool like Sea Tools operates very much like Spinrite but Spinrite is much more intense and time consuming.

I would copy all saveable data off the HDD, attempt a format that usually failed then bust the drive with Delpart.EXE, run Spinrite then repartition the drive and unconditional format. If successful attempt to use the drive - If not , toss the drive.
 
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