Bad sector on hard drive question

Hi, question here. One of the hard drives at work has 1 bad sector on it and my owner wants me to install a new one for him. My question is, I can have the old hard drive and just wondering if this 1 sector on a 30 GB hard drive will crash my compute or something. Is it fixable or should I just not worry about it? When it was repaired, it said it would run fine at work but he wanted a new HD installed and said I can have this one. Will it work? Thanks!!

 

It would work. Personally, I would mark the drive as unreliable. It might last for a couple of years or 3 weeks, you can count on other bad sectors showing up later on. It would be good for files you really do not care about.

 

Hmmmmmm. Okay. So, there is no way to fix it, huh? We were just going to use it for downloads like music etc....

Okay, I'll ponder that. LOL!!!

Thank you!

 

Get smart - if its less than 3 years old, in most cases you can contact the mfg and get a replacement. If you do keep it - keep an eye on it because if it starts showing evidence of a few more, it won't be long before its toast. As was said previously, you just don't know - could last a long time but when it starts going, it can deterioriate very quickly and muck up a lot of stuff.

 

could last a long time but when it starts going, it can deterioriate very quickly and muck up a lot of stuff.

Very true.

Experience speaking here.

Deffinetly keep an eye ( or two ) on it. And if the numbers do start increasing REPLACE IT ASAP.

BillyBob

 

Thanks guys, I won't take the chance. HD's aren't that pricey anymore so I'll just get another one and not chance it on my home computer!!!

Thanks everyone!

 

added use!

While you might not trust it for your O/S and critical stuff it could still be useful as a temp space drive.

I would replace it as your primary drive, and install it as a slave, then run GWSCAN, and the repair function if needed. Often this is all it takes...

Also I would move non critical downloads, game files and other junk to it as a slave drive - stuff if you found it missing wouldn't bother you. - At this point its free space...

 

Thats what I was wondering. I already have a 30GB that is almost full and this would take a lot of burden off of that hard drive with tons of .mp3's, games etc... Stuff that is replaceable.



Haven't done it yet, just wanted to check it out with you guys first. Didn't want to bust my computer! Hee Hee!! The ones at work are replaceable (as is mine, but I care about mine more!) so I won't worry so much! I haven't installed it yet at work, haven't had the time but when I get the HD home I'll be posting again, I'm sure.


Oh yeah, can it be partitioned so that that part of the drive isn't used? Or won't that work?

Thanks again!!

 

Partitoning is usually a good idea. You'll have a smaller cluster size, you won't be wasting HD space, and you can organize as to type of files. When you format it, the bad sector will be marked as bad by format and it won't be used.
When you do fdisk, your first partition can be created as an extended partition, then set up the logical drives. You won't need a primary partition as you won't be booting off of it. You'll be able to do it this way if you set the jumper so it is a slave and hook it up to the other connector on the same ribbon your first HD is on.
Fdisk will call your "new" old drive as Drive 2, be sure you partition the right one.

 

Kittie Cat

Let me put my 2 cents in on the HD.

Some of the others were correct, most HDs have a 3 to 5 Yr warranty!

But one sector! I have seen more than this go on a HD untill the motor gave out 6- 8 yrs later!

Most people don't know that all HDs have bad sectors. Only a few yrs ago you could find a factory bad sector table on some drives. As they are tested these are marked as bad from the factory. Only today they don't mention it! If quality control can pass the drive with the advertized size then the drive is passed along to sell.

If it had several and they were not together but spread to several locations then some worry.

You said this unit was at your office! More than likely someone bumped it or droped it while trying to get more desk space! WHILE IT WAS RUNNING!

You see the platters in a HD are metal but look like a small CD disk if you could see it. Theses platters are spinning at from 7000-10,000 rpm if they are bumped hard enough then gyroscopic stabilazation begins as the disk tries to stay in its current state. If it moves more than a few 1000s of an inch it hits the read write head that normally never touches the platter. Hence a scratch like dropping the arm on an old time record. Smile!

I would use it as a second or spare drive and not worry at all! Check it every few weeks for a while if no more bad sectors then wait for the motor to fail first!

But do do this! Don't just format it, FDISK it, and don't be surprised if at the beginning it will say something like "Recovering bad sectors" this is normal! It will not use these sectors again!
After FDISK and format do a scandisk with surface scan!

Use it or lose it!!!!

Mike

 

You cannot use FDISK under Windows XP.

Is there a similar function there?

 

sabaira
Did you try to run Fdisk while Windows XP was running? Be glad it didn't run, as it would have wiped out your operating system, your installed programs, and all your files. Nothing would have been left. It is for preparing your HD prior to formatting.
Run a thorough Scandisk, instead.

 

Thanks for the warning, but I am indeed familiar with FDISK, and it *may* be used for informative purposes on any disk.

In any event, my point was that, as far as I know, there is no FDISK program in Windows XP.

Am I right? And if so, what is the equivalent progarm in XP?

 

Fdisk - not in XP

Partitioning is done inside the install program (blue & white DOS looking...) or once the system is up, from the Disk Management snapin.

 

Thank you Mike for your great description of how the thing works! I told them at work that it wasn't a major problem and it would last but they wanted it replaced ASAP, which I did last week. I have yet to install it on my computer but am not going to worry about it. I just want to use it for junk stuff like .mp3's and other crud, maybe trial software and whatnot. They know I'm quitting there soon (I'm a receptionist/slave/only one who knows a bit about computers) and they know they'd have to pay someone a few hundred bucks to do it for them! So they got cheap labor outta me but I got the hard drive, I guess that is ok with me! I want the real cash!! Thanks again and will keep y'all posted on what happens with it. I may do it this week while I'm on vacation....

 

Hi all! Well got the drive last night and am ready to give it a shot... Everyone here is giving different things to do and I'm a bit confused about the steps. Could someone give me an outline on how to go about this? Also, I keep the original HD as the Primary and this one as the slave, correct? Also, don't I need to do something with the pins to set it as the slave? (It's been quite awhile!) Then once that is done, turn it on and................................ now what?

Thanks again everyone!!!

 

Forgot to add that I have Windows 2000, NEED HELP!!!

Anyone? I forgot to add that I have Windows 2000 OS.

 

Ready to install that HD w/bad sector, need help!!

Hi all! Well got the drive last night and am ready to give it a shot... Everyone here is giving different things to do and I'm a bit confused about the steps. Could someone give me an outline on how to go about this? Also, I keep the original HD as the Primary and this one as the slave, correct? Also, don't I need to do something with the pins to set it as the slave? (It's been quite awhile!) Then once that is done, turn it on and................................ now what?



Forgot to add that I don't have a startup disk but this isn't going to be the primary drive so don't know if I need it and I don't know where to place the jumpers on the slave drive.....

Thanks again!

 

Look on the drive for a diagram, it will show you how to set the jumpers so it is a slave.

 

OH... Now THIS is messed up!!!

I cannot believe after going through all the darned trouble of putting that thing in, it ends up reading it's a 3.0 GB disk!!!!!!! HOW can that be? All of them at work are 30 GB. It doesn't indicate anywhere on the darned thing what size it is! All this crud for 3.0 GB! Could that be wrong somehow?? I used my Partition Magic on it-maybe I did something wrong????????????????? I'm so pissy now!!!! After ALL that! *sigh*