Bad Sector on Hard Drive

[TheCoolsurdy]

Hello,
I installed HD Tune Pro and ran a long Error Scan test. Everything was green except for one rectangle that was red, and it says "Error at 348013 MB (LBA 7127..."

If you're wondering why half the Hard Drive wasn't scanned, I scanned the first half, and then the second half.

Here's an image of this:

I then go into the 'Health' tab and see that there is a warning for "C5 Current Pending Sector" and it says:

Description: Number of unstable sectors: 1
Status: The drive has unstable sectors.

Here is an image of that:

I have already backed up all my important data. I have no problems with formatting/deleting all my data. In fact I was actually thinking of reinstalling Windows.

Help?

 

[ronintexas]

One sector doesn't always indicate the drive is dying - it could be just a bad sector. You should monitor the drive to make sure the amount of sectors aren't increasing. Go ahead and give it a try in reinstalling Windows.

 

[TheCoolsurdy]

Should I do a quick format or a long format when I reinstall Windows? I want to delete everything and do a fresh installation. I know the only difference is that long format checks sectors.

And is there any way to fix a bad sector?

 

[ronintexas]

You can't "fix" a bad sector - when they are found, they are marked as bad, and any data written to it is moved. When you reformat/reinstall Windows, that sector is skipped. The bad sectors are stored in the firmware of the HDD. You don't need to reformat or reinstall anything if you don't want to....

The thing I would do is run either chkdsk or other utility every week or so for a while to make sure that more sectors aren't being flagged as bad.

Most drives will have one or more bad sectors on the drive - and most of the time you don't have to worry about 1-2 bad sectors a year (especially on the large drives made today), it is when you are getting 1-2 bad sectors per week (or even worse - per day) that you should worry.

 

[TheCoolsurdy]

You can't "fix" a bad sector - when they are found, they are marked as bad, and any data written to it is moved. When you reformat/reinstall Windows, that sector is skipped. The bad sectors are stored in the firmware of the HDD. You don't need to reformat or reinstall anything if you don't want to....

The thing I would do is run either chkdsk or other utility every week or so for a while to make sure that more sectors aren't being flagged as bad.

Most drives will have one or more bad sectors on the drive - and most of the time you don't have to worry about 1-2 bad sectors a year (especially on the large drives made today), it is when you are getting 1-2 bad sectors per week (or even worse - per day) that you should worry.

Well I am having issues with my hard drive. I just copied and pasted this from another thread:

Alright, I think I've concluded that it is my Hard Drive. Although SeaTools didn't come up with many errors, my PC is exhibiting behavior that is usually caused by a faulty HD. I've looked all over the web, and they all end up pointing to a faulty Hard Drive.

First of all "Nividia kernal mode error" is caused by many things, all of which I've slowly crossed out, but a faulty HD. A faulty hard drive can cause this issue.

BSOD "KERNAL DATA INPAGE ERROR" is caused by a faulty hard drive, and that is what I end up getting whenever I freeze.

See Image #1:
http://imgur.com/PAaUTJg

My programs are constantly freezing and locking up and "Not Responding"

My Hard Drive is almost always at 99-100% even when I'm doing no intensive application, and both read and write speeds are 0 KB/s.

I just recently crashed when I was burning the Windows 8 .iso file to a DVD with "Disk I/O Error0x000009d" all my apps crash, Skype displays a "Disk I/O" error, my screen goes black, I can still move my mouse though
See Image #2:
http://imgur.com/J7pjy37

Then after waiting that "Disk I/O" out for over 10 minutes, I decided to reboot my PC which it said to do, and then it said "Scanning and repairing drive" when I tried to reboot.

I checked my warranty status, Seagate only offers warranty for 90 days, which means I'll have to get a new Hard Drive. But hey, I've been wanting to upgrade to an SSD for a while, might ask my parents for one 😛

Anyways, I'm still going to try to reset and clean install Windows, in case that works, becuase I'll need to delete all my data anyways when I get a new Hard Drive.

 

[brycefoster]

if the hard drive is still within expiration date, you can ask help from after-saling tech support to repair the bad sector. I'm afraid simply formatting can't fix the bad sector, because formatting under Windows usually fast formatting whcih can't repair bad sectors

 

[Saga Lout]

if the hard drive is still within expiration date, you can ask help from after-saling tech support to repair the bad sector. I'm afraid simply formatting can't fix the bad sector, because formatting under Windows usually fast formatting whcih can't repair bad sectors

Checkdisk can sometimes. On formatting, - you can choose a full format against a quick one. My own policy on a suspect hard disk is to replace it.. They are so inexpensive these days it's not worth any risk.

 

[TheCoolsurdy]

You can't "fix" a bad sector - when they are found, they are marked as bad, and any data written to it is moved. When you reformat/reinstall Windows, that sector is skipped. The bad sectors are stored in the firmware of the HDD. You don't need to reformat or reinstall anything if you don't want to....

The thing I would do is run either chkdsk or other utility every week or so for a while to make sure that more sectors aren't being flagged as bad.

Most drives will have one or more bad sectors on the drive - and most of the time you don't have to worry about 1-2 bad sectors a year (especially on the large drives made today), it is when you are getting 1-2 bad sectors per week (or even worse - per day) that you should worry.

So again, should I do a quick format or a long format, or does it not matter? I have crap tons of registry issues and want to reinstall Windows.

 

[Saga Lout]

A long format. Sometimes when a disk is totally non-responsive, a quick format allows quite a successful data recovery. A full format hardly ever does.

 

[TheCoolsurdy]

if the hard drive is still within expiration date, you can ask help from after-saling tech support to repair the bad sector. I'm afraid simply formatting can't fix the bad sector, because formatting under Windows usually fast formatting whcih can't repair bad sectors

Checkdisk can sometimes. On formatting, - you can choose a full format against a quick one. My own policy on a suspect hard disk is to replace it.. They are so inexpensive these days it's not worth any risk.

My computer is having issues with the Hard Drive, I was just loading up Battlefield: Hardline, but it was taking an unusually long time to load, over 10 minutes. It usually takes no more than 2 minutes to load. I hadn't even loaded into the game yet, and all my other programs just froze and were "Not Responding". I then waited it out for over 15 minutes, and then I went to a black screen and a little error message popped up "The sign in process couldn't display security and sign in options" and it said to CTRL + ALT + DELETE and if that didn't work, manually restart the computer. So I waited it out a little more, then manually restarted the computer.

When Windows booted up, chkdsk started "Scanning and Reparing drives". I then took a shower, came back 10 minutes later, Windows 8 start screen was there, signed in, ran HD Tune Pro again over the previously bad sectors and boom! The sector was fixed and green again!

Thank you!

 

[Saga Lout]

Well done. If you ever want to invoke it rather than wait for it to pop up by itself, the command is
chkdsk c: /r

The /r switch is the one that tells it to find and fix bad sectors or clusters of sectors. I suggest you backup more often until you buy a new disk. A bad sector isn't repaired per se but sidelined to avoid future use.

 

[ronintexas]

Agree with Saga - the bad sectors aren't fixed - they are removed from the map and marked in the firmware of the drive. The biggest concern will be if more bad sectors are appearing - and the interval they appear in. Depending upon the manufacturer of the drive, you must have anywhere from 1 to over 100 bad sectors before they determine the drive to be bad.

I have always stuck with Western Digital - they have 5 year warranties on the black drives, and bad sectors gets you a replacement drive. In the last 10-15 years, I have only RMA'd one drive (personal use), and I have 6 computers at home....

 

[TheCoolsurdy]

Yeah...the days of glory are over

Sadly, my Hard Drive died

Checkdisk running every time I boot up, programs not responding, BSOD with errors all causes by a bad hard drive. I even tried formatting my drive and reinstalling Windows.

Luckily I was able to get a 240 GB SSD from OCZ for $100.

 

[Saga Lout]

That's a good disk. I run my system and programmes off mine and store the data in a separate spinning disk. It's far faster than ever it was with everything on one HDD.