[Tetons_Sam]

Use a damaged HDD as temp storage for data only??

I have a 1 tb int HDD that is only 2 yrs old, but it suddenly showed 2-3 bad sectors out of multitude. I moved the OS and important data to a new drive. But, I've found that I can still do all the normal file activities on the damaged drive - read, write, etc. I think Windows must have written something to one of the bad areas which caused the OS to malfunction.
I plan to put the damaged drive in an ext drive case and use it for occasional temporary storage, maintenance tasks, etc by way of a USB port.
I'm curious how long it will take to find the bad areas with a small data flow. What do you think of this?:ermm:

 

[Stancestans]

Hi and welcome to TSF!

How did you determine the bad sector count? Did you use some hdd diagnostic utility? I recommend CrystalDisk Info and then post a screenshot of the results, then we can all see what S.M.A.R.T reports on the disk's health including reallocated (bad) sector count.

As for how long it would take to hit the bad sectors, that is inconclusive because free space is not always contiguous on a hdd and the bad sectors could be anywhere on the disk surface. I would suggest performing a surface scan of the HDD to find the exact physical location(s) of the bad sectors, then you can resize and move the partition on the disk so that the area with the bad sectors remains unused as unallocated space. This of course assumes that all the bad sectors are not scattered far apart on the disk surface, which is often the case as they tend to occur geometrically close and continue to spread with continued usage of the disk particularly in that affected area. For disk surface scan and partition management, I recommend EASEUS Partition Master (home edition is free).

 

[Wizmo]

Umm, pardon me for asking a silly question but WHY on earth would you want to trust data stored on a drive which has proven defects? HDD's are currently so cheap it almost BEGS for disaster!!

Unless it is an experiment, and you simply want to try it with inconsequential files...... :huh:

Once a drive begins to show wear and growing bad sectors it almost always is a downward spiral to full failure! Certainly if it no longer is suitable for an OS installation it is NOT to be trusted :facepalm:

 

[Mighty_Miro_WD]

Hi @Tetons_Sam and welcome to the techsupport forum!

I personally won't recommend to trust any of your data with a drive that has bad sectors - you simply cannot tell when it's going to fail, and with it everything stored there as well.

As for the bad sectors, there are basically two kinds - hardware and software. Hardware ones are caused by physical damage or becoming magnetically fixed, and they are unrepairable. Software bad sectors on the other hand are when something called an Error Correction Code (ECC) doesn't match the contents of the hard drive. These you can try to repair by overwriting the data on the drive with zeroes, but there's no sure way to say if the drive will be fixed, and also if the bad sectors are hardware related they will grow in number.

In short, I agree with the others and would suggest to replace the unit.

Hope this helps and best of luck!