Old Hard Disk

[meadish_sweetball]

Ok, this is a large topic I think, so I will provide as much info as I can.

In my computer is a Hitachi 250GB hard disk which has been used heavily (around the clock except for during holiday periods) for over 2 years. It used to be inside an Iomega case, but when the fan in the Iomega case failed I ended up taking out the hard drive and fitting it inside my desktop PC instead. It worked ok for 6 months but last week it started reporting failures. (Messages delivered in the system field by the clock, in Yellow warning triangles - saying something like "There was an error writing to file H:File name. The data may be lost. Please try saving this file elsewhere.")

Then when I turned the computer on and off, the S.M.A.R.T. utility during bootup claimed the disk had Status: BAD, Backup and replace.

So I did. I copied all the data from the old disk to a brand new one. Now the old hard disk has three empty partitions: F (app. 48 GB), G (app. 99 GB) and H (app. 97 GB). The file system on all partitions is FAT32.

All the problems reported so far have been on the H partition.

A summary generated by the scan disk utility reports 2832 kb of damaged sectors on the H partition, but no damaged sectors at all on the other two partitions.

This leads me to think that it might be possible that a large percentage of the disk is still alright and usable. It was no problem to copy over the data from the hard disk to the new one. All files were transferred at normal speed and no errors were reported during the transfer. So it seems reading files from the hard disk is no problem, at any rate.

Also, the hard drive does not click or anything. It sounds normal.

I was adviced to try to format the H partition, and tried to do so in the Windows Disk Management tool, but at the end of the operation I got an error message saying the formatting failed.

So now I am wondering how to proceed.

What I would like to do is to try to isolate the physically bad sectors completely and only use the rest. Is this possible, and how should I go about it, do you think?

I would also like your advice on what software would be most effective to do the above. Maybe the Windows and DOS utilities are enough?

If the scan disk results are correct, I still have 200 GB of storage on the disk, and it would be nice to use it. Of course I understand I should not use this disk for any essential data, only as a bit of a dump for stuff I can afford to lose...

Your advice is as always very appreciated.

Cheers

[Simmo]

From my experience , once a drive starts developing bad sectors, its a quick death from there.

Modern drives have internal management logic that remaps bad sectors to an unused pool on the drive. That means if the OS is showing you bad sectors this pool has already been used up.

Have a look at this link, patriculary some of the answer towards the bottom for more info and some suggestions on tools to use.

[meadish_sweetball]

Simmo,

That is an *excellent* link you provided. Thank you very much!

[sting01]

Simmo,

That is an *excellent* link you provided. Thank you very much!

There is a shop in Pantip, 5th floor who can retrieve your data. Cost is around 1 000 bht

[meadish_sweetball]

Thank you sting01, I am sure that will be useful information to somebody who reads the thread.

I have already backed up all my data though.

[JohnC]

You dont say what OP you are usin g, but assuming its WinXP why not just reinstall windows and somewhere along the line it gives you the option to clear old partitions and change to NTFS and re-partition the hard drive. I would suspect that way you can use the "good" sectors although I am not an expert and others may disagree!

[h90]

Hi Swedish Meat...

reformat the HD in NTSC, not quickformat, make it the slow way, try to fill the HD with Data, and extensive test it.

If no problem continue but make daily backups, don´t trust it.

If there are small problem, exchange it on warranty or flush it down in the toilett.

With problems it will die very soon, 1 day, 1 week, 1 month but guarantee to longer

[meadish_sweetball]

I got test software from the manufacturer (Hitachi) and it says that the hard drive is no good due to excessive shock and should be replaced. I managed to create new partitions and format it in NTFS in the end, but when i tried writing to it I kept getting error messages, so it is no good anymore. It is the toilet as per h90's suggestion.

Thank you everyone for your advice.

[phibunmike]

I got test software from the manufacturer (Hitachi) and it says that the hard drive is no good due to excessive shock and should be replaced. I managed to create new partitions and format it in NTFS in the end, but when i tried writing to it I kept getting error messages, so it is no good anymore. It is the toilet as per h90's suggestion.

Thank you everyone for your advice.

The magnet makes a better fridge magnet than the ones usually available, and can hold at least 4 pizza delivery menus, even in a draught...

[h90]

I got test software from the manufacturer (Hitachi) and it says that the hard drive is no good due to excessive shock and should be replaced. I managed to create new partitions and format it in NTFS in the end, but when i tried writing to it I kept getting error messages, so it is no good anymore. It is the toilet as per h90's suggestion.

Thank you everyone for your advice.

The magnet makes a better fridge magnet than the ones usually available, and can hold at least 4 pizza delivery menus, even in a draught...

the metal discs are very beautifull like a mirror, but I didn´t found any usage for them yet. For a mirror to small and the screw in the middle.

[xty]

the metal discs are very beautifull like a mirror, but I didn´t found any usage for them yet. For a mirror to small and the screw in the middle.

my friend used the harddisk case (after taking out the metal discs) as an ashtray