Bad Sectors

[Killer_Rubber_Ducky]

I was working on my roommates rig because his system would lag for a bit then move on.
Defragging always failed with no reason listed.
I ran disk check and it failed at 10% on part 4/5.
I backed up his important files and ran UBCD and disk checked it there and found 1500 errors.
Best I could figure was bad sectors but what caused them?
I used @Active KillDrive to low level format the drive to hopefully remove the bad sector issue but will that really solve it?
The drive does not seem damaged as SMART came back fine.

 

[Kreij]

A magnetic medium can deteriorate over time which results in bad sector growth.
If it's a relatively old HDD, I would replace it as it will most likely get worse as time goes on.

 

[W1zzard]

if it's a WD hdd, just use their excellenr advance RMA. "sector pending" in the SMART attributes = bad sectors in WD speak

I just replaced a 1.5 TB WD15EADS. 3rd RMA of that model. Always getting bad sectors and slowing down the system to a crawl.

 

[Sasqui]

Weird that SMART status is OK.

Once a sector goes bad, it will usually get worse. Even a spec of dust can eventually tear off bits, causing a cascade of failures. But there are exceptions.

My own story: I have a WD 500GB AAKS that was reporting bad sectors, SMART status was ok. It turned out to be a faulty Antec enclosure that the drive was in. Works like a charm plugged directly into my MB. Food for thought.

 

[Killer_Rubber_Ducky]

It is a seagate Barracuda. The drive is 750GB from 2009 I guess.
It seems that is was a FS Bad sector issue rather than physical medium.
The diagnostics I ran on UBCD indicated it was File system related but no indication of why.
I have thought about having him replace it though.

 

[brandonwh64]

It is a seagate Barracuda. The drive is 750GB from 2009 I guess.
It seems that is was a FS Bad sector issue rather than physical medium.
The diagnostics I ran on UBCD indicated it was File system related but no indication of why.
I have thought about having him replace it though.

Hmmm I wonder if seagate will RMA?

 

[Killer_Rubber_Ducky]

Hmmm I wonder if seagate will RMA?

I doubt it. It came as part of a Pavilion Elite system. I already tried getting Seagate to give me an updated Firmware for it but they said because it was running the HP24 firmware, the OEM would have to provide it. HP has one that is only compatible with XP or Vista.

 

[Kreij]

True, Seagate will not RMA drives in OEM devices. I checked on a drive that was in an external enclosure made by another company and they said contect the Mfgr.

 

[eidairaman1]

Try Hitachi Disk Fitness test or a older version of Seagate seatools/ diskwizzard that came before Acronis n is DOS bootable/bootdisk

 

[Killer_Rubber_Ducky]

Try Hitachi Disk Fitness test or a older version of Seagate seatools/ diskwizzard that came before Acronis n is DOS bootable/bootdisk

to determine what exactly?

I have already run DiskCheck and a few other tools on UBCD.
I know the drive is fine but not why it has had bad sectors.
When I wiped it I did a 1 time write of Zeros across the entire drive.
I need to know how to prevent it.

 

[Kreij]

Intermittent problems due to the HDD controller or maybe the cables?
Maybe the port on the mobo?

Interesting one you have here, Ducky.

 

[TheMailMan78]

if it's a WD hdd, just use their excellenr advance RMA. "sector pending" in the SMART attributes = bad sectors in WD speak

I just replaced a 1.5 TB WD15EADS. 3rd RMA of that model. Always getting bad sectors and slowing down the system to a crawl.

Yup. I had 4 RMA's. Gave up on them.

 

[95Viper]

HP has one that is only compatible with XP or Vista.

What drive model?
What OS?

 

[Killer_Rubber_Ducky]

what drive model?
What os?

st3750330as

 

[eidairaman1]

to determine what exactly?

I have already run DiskCheck and a few other tools on UBCD.
I know the drive is fine but not why it has had bad sectors.
When I wiped it I did a 1 time write of Zeros across the entire drive.
I need to know how to prevent it.

sometimes those programs can repair the sectors actually

 

[Bambooz]

I just replaced a 1.5 TB WD15EADS. 3rd RMA of that model. Always getting bad sectors and slowing down the system to a crawl.

Yup. I had 4 RMA's. Gave up on them.

Disable the head parking timer with WDIDLE3. It's what kills those Green-series WD's so quick, because by default, they park their heads off of the platters on a plastic ramp after just 4 seconds of inactivity.

I've seen less than a year old WD Greens with way over 500k headparking counts.. a.k.a. on their way to HDD heaven.

The value of interest is "(C1) Load Cycle Count" in SMART. The raw value = number of head parkings.. should normally be very close to "(04) Start/Stop Count". If it's significantly higher (more than ~100), try to disable it with WDIDLE3 ASAP, or you're risking to kill the drive prematurely.

Just as a heads-up. This only applies to regular Green series WD's. No other WD series has this timer, not even the AV-Greens ("AV-GP").

 

[eidairaman1]

Disable the head parking timer with WDIDLE3. It's what kills those Green-series WD's so quick, because by default, they park their heads off of the platters on a plastic ramp after just 4 seconds of inactivity.

I've seen less than a year old WD Greens with way over 500k headparking counts.. a.k.a. on their way to HDD heaven.

The value of interest is "(C1) Load Cycle Count" in SMART. The raw value = number of head parkings.. should normally be very close to "(04) Start/Stop Count". If it's significantly higher (more than ~100), try to disable it with WDIDLE3 ASAP, or you're risking to kill the drive prematurely.

Just as a heads-up. This only applies to regular Green series WD's. No other WD series has this timer, not even the AV-Greens ("AV-GP").

i had that happen 2 1 hitachi laptop drive when i made it a external drive. The head alignment got jacked up

 

[Mussels]

why not just chkdisk /r the drive? thats windows in built method of 'repairing' bad sectors.

 

[AsRock]

Full format of the HDD in windows or with CHKDSK will scan the bad sectors and check for more bad ones.

And if more pop over time drives heading for death.. Some times it's just a few of the magnets get bad but some times shit can hit the fan real bad..

I have a few seagates and they all got bad sectors but all work perfectly fine other wise and the number is not increased over the years..

 

[Killer_Rubber_Ducky]

why not just chkdisk /r the drive? thats windows in built method of 'repairing' bad sectors.

first thing i tried. it failed on section 4 of 5 at 10%.

 

[Mussels]

first thing i tried. it failed on section 4 of 5 at 10%.

damn.

if you find out what part of the drive is bad, you can always partition around it.


EG, if you know the error is 10% in, just do some paritions so 0-8% is "D:" while 12-100% is "E:"

its only a workaround, but could bypass the bad sectors.

 

[Bambooz]

If you use something like HDTune to do the error scan, you could easily pinpoint the problematic location(s)

In the screenshot below, every box is 381MB (see "Legend"). If (for example) the 31st block was red (bad), you'd have 30 good blocks before it, i.e. 30x 381MB = 11,430MB (11.1GB) in this case.

Pretty tedious way of working your way around the bad sectors, but it would work.
The only time this doesn't work out at all is if you have bad sectors all over the place. Wouldn't make sense to make a dozen partitions of a few GB each..

PS: don't do a quick error scan! It fails to detect bad sectors even on known bad HDDs for some reason.

PS V2: to make the counting a bit easier, there are 50 blocks per row. So if 2 rows are completely green, that's 100 blocks.
Using the example above, that would be 100x 381MB = 38,100MB (or 37.2GB)