Is it time to stick a fork in this HDD?

Casually Hardcore

I'm working on this laptop that had serious slowdown issues to the point where it was taking 10 minutes to load up windows, and it will lock up and BSOD.

I did a reformat and ran some diagnostic software. The HDD fail Seatools (both windows and DOS) long generic scan. I ran HDtune error scan and this is the results



So is this HDD done for?

bowen

That's not an awful lot of bad sectors. You might want to do a chkdisk and then do a full format (rather than a quick one). That should mark those bad sectors as bad and it should work fine after that.

DumpShock

If time and cost are not a issue then replace it. Drives with bad sectors can live on after a chkdsk and a format as bowen suggested, but more often then not they just develop more bad sectors over time until they eventually crater. It's best just to recover the data while it's in a salvageable state and replace.

bowen

That's true. Most drives ship with bad sectors though. What probably happened was windows installed some core files into a sector that was good, but is now bad. Thus an incredibly slow boot time/slow performance.

Casually Hardcore

Well, this isn't my laptop.

The user of this laptop have very minimum technical skills with computers and I rather spend the extra money to replace the hard drive then save the money and try to stretch out the life of this drive as much as I can.

I'm just wondering if this hard drive is truly on its last leg, cause I never experience a drive failing before.

bowen

That's a relatively new drive (after WD switched to the blue/green/black ratings). I'd say it's probably fine. Especially if you don't hear any audible noises other than activity (no clicking or grinding).

If you're still able to access and it's still getting good read/write times, the controller is probably also good.

So that rules out both hardware and software faults in the drive, just sounds like random bad sector luck to me. If it happens again in another 6 months (same issues, more bad sectors) then you've probably got a junker.

baudattitude

My personal policy on HDs is that the cost of replacing a twitchy one is nothing compared to the headache of getting the data off if it decides to die after I give it a second chance.

Swap that one out, stick the one one in an enclosure and use it as a scratch drive for when you need to shuttle data around, or take it apart and play with the magnets, but I wouldn't trust it with anything important after the first failure.

Sir Headless VII

That hard-drive should have a 2 year warranty, if it is really failing you and in the warranty period could try and do an RMA. I have never done it with WD but I have had several hard-drives replaced that way.