[SOLVED] 311 bad sectors, How bad is my HDD?

[Limyx826]

My HDD recently have been acting up and I decided to run surface test with a partition manager. So based on the attached image how bad is it?

 

[punkncat]

The moment that you start seeing bad sectors on a HDD is time to replace it. Hopefully you already have a backup for items you want to keep. Plan for this to fail at any time. It could last a super long time, it could quit a few seconds from now.

 

[Limyx826]

Good thing that I just transfer the entire HDD data into a SSD replacement. A question though how well for the old HDD to serve as external hard drive?

 

[USAFRet]

A question though how well for the old HDD to serve as external hard drive?

How much do you value the data that will be on it?

 

[TerryLaze]

The moment that you start seeing bad sectors on a HDD is time to replace it.

All hard drives come with an amount of spare sectors because it's expected for a bunch of them to fail right out of the gate.

If this was a read only test and based on how far spread the sectors are this could just be a matter of connection loss with the OS flagging the sectors bad because of failure to read them.

You should always look at any hdd like it's ready to die even if it's brand new, as far as your valuable files are concerned at least.

 

[fzabkar]

Examine the SMART report with a tool such as CrystalDiskInfo. Look for reallocated, pending or uncorrectable sectors.

 

[lvt]

I used to see this problem with floppy disks long ago, but never on a HDD.

Time to replace the HDD, even an used HDD will be more reliable.

 

[Karadjgne]

What you see isn't what you get. Hdd's and SSDs have redundancy built into them, usually in the neighborhood of 7-13% extra. This is why they sit at 100% for so long, when a sector goes bad, it's quarantined, and replaced by one of the redundancy sectors. You'll only start actually seeing bad sectors, 99%, when that redundancy is all used up.

Your hdd is well past that point and headed for catastrophic software failure quick-fast and in a hurry. Chkdsk might be able to stave that from happening for a short while, but it's a snowball rolling down a sharp hill, the issue will only get bigger, faster until... Bang. No more reliable OS, lost or corrupted important keepsake data etc.

It's toast, junk-worthy. Needs replacement asap, sooner the better, before data becomes lost or corrupted.

 

[Limyx826]

What you see isn't what you get. Hdd's and SSDs have redundancy built into them, usually in the neighborhood of 7-13% extra. This is why they sit at 100% for so long, when a sector goes bad, it's quarantined, and replaced by one of the redundancy sectors. You'll only start actually seeing bad sectors, 99%, when that redundancy is all used up.

Your hdd is well past that point and headed for catastrophic software failure quick-fast and in a hurry. Chkdsk might be able to stave that from happening for a short while, but it's a snowball rolling down a sharp hill, the issue will only get bigger, faster until... Bang. No more reliable OS, lost or corrupted important keepsake data etc.

It's toast, junk-worthy. Needs replacement asap, sooner the better, before data becomes lost or corrupted.

What you described is what happen to my PC for past two weeks.

 

[USAFRet]

What you described is what happen to my PC for past two weeks.

Drives die. All of them eventually. Some, sooner than others.

 

[Karadjgne]

Damage is not linear. It's not like you'll see 1 more bad sector every few days. Damage is logarithmic. You'll see 1 bad in a few days, 2 bad a few days later, 6 more bad a few days after that, 20 more withing another few days etc...

Right now the OS is not corrupted. That gives you a fighting chance to save any and all remaining info. If the OS goes bunk, or especially the boot sector or MBR goes bunk, you'll be out of luck, can be very difficult to save Anything, if at all.

That hdd is a ticking time bomb, and you have seconds left before boom, not minutes. Really needs replacing Asap.