is there any point in trying to salavage an internal hard disk that is giving errors

martin57

Hi folks,


I have 2 internal hard drives in my computer one for OS and and other for data etc.


A few days ago windows 7 started giving me messages that Hitachi 1TB data drive was about to fail.


I did have a few prgrams on it which failed to open in windows (I had it partitioned into 5 different partitions) chdsk said that some files were unreadbable when I ran it.


I did run seatools from Sagate which found no problems.


Anyways I bought a new western digital 2 TB drive at maplin for £90 (should have bought it from Amazon for £65 but too impatient to wait for it)

No grinding noise etc from old Hitachi 1TB drive or anything, but just wanted to be sure so bought the new drive.


I know old drive is outside the warranty as it is well over 3 years old
Just wondering is there any point really in deleting all the partitions on the old drive and then recreating them again, is it possible this might fix any errors etc?


Thanks for any advice.

Martin57

WTFH

You could try re-formatting it. It may just be a couple of dodgy sectors, in which case the drive may be OK to use for some time to come.

S0litaire

have you checked the warranty status of the drive? Think Hitachi did 1, 3 & 5 year warranties depending on the make of the drive.

you never know...

gobeyond

martin57 wrote: »

Hi folks,
Just wondering is there any point really in deleting all the partitions on the old drive and then recreating them again, is it possible this might fix any errors etc?

If the hard drive is on its way out, then it is unlikely to be completely fixed by formatting it. However, you can get extra life out of it that way and something which, considering the relatively short time it will take, is worth a try.

I presume data is backed up etc? If so, it may be worth just using the new hard drive, as really the current hard drive will need replaced.

westwood68

Errors can happen for a number of reasons and it does not have to be failure related.

I'd just setup the new drive as the OS drive and low level format the old one with seatools then put it back in the PC as a third non-essential drive.

You've got the new drive anyway so you might as well use it.

burtward911

Doing a full format (not a quick format) will scan the drive and mark any bad sectors so Windows will not use them. If a drive is failing the bad sector problem will usually spread to more and more.

I would treat the drive as unreliable at this stage. If you want to confirm the drive is dying I recommend only storing data on there that is backed up/saved on another drive at the same time, or that you are not bothered about losing.
You might get lucky and it might just be a few bad sectors on the drive.

P.S I've had 5 drives I can think of, across different computers, that have displayed this behaviour and I have tested them in the manner above. 4 have been terminal and the corrupt file problem has got worse, 1 of them I got lucky and I'm still using it now after re-format.

Its_Nice_Here

burtward911 wrote: »

Doing a full format (not a quick format) will scan the drive and mark any bad sectors so Windows will not use them. If a drive is failing the bad sector problem will usually spread to more and more.

I would treat the drive as unreliable at this stage. If you want to confirm the drive is dying I recommend only storing data on there that is backed up/saved on another drive at the same time, or that you are not bothered about losing.
You might get lucky and it might just be a few bad sectors on the drive.

P.S I've had 5 drives I can think of, across different computers, that have displayed this behaviour and I have tested them in the manner above. 4 have been terminal and the corrupt file problem has got worse, 1 of them I got lucky and I'm still using it now after re-format.

I can second this experience.