Bad Sectors on Hard drive

[brandonmckinnell]

So i have a few WD Blue drives that i am scanning over and formatting to use on future projects. If i do the windows CHKDSK it shows my drive is fine and no errors at all. However if i run the WD Lifeguard utility one of my drives makes it really far into the scan and then stops saying it has found bad sectors. Im just confused how CHKDSK says everything is fine but the WD utility is telling me otherwise. Also does anyone has any good recommendations for free hard drive repair utilities?

 

[junkeymonkey]

A bad sector is a sector on a computer's disk drive or flash memory that is either inaccessible or unwriteable due to permanent damage,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_sector


heres the thing

If any of the files uses a sector which is marked as 'bad' by disk utility then the bad sector of the file is remapped to a free sector and any unreadable data is lost

so is it bad I a place that done no harm ?? di it go bad with a core windows system data in it and now lost or corrupted when moved ??

I run drives with bad sectors and there been times a program or what ever may act funny and this may of been the cause so I uninstall/reinstall /repair

I use data life guard but I found you cant test the drive your running on you best test the drive standalone as in the drive you want to test hook up to a computer like a secondary/ storage drive and test it [opinion]

wd says on there drives if it fails its bad ?

heres a wd rep in this thread , private message him to help in your answer as well .. he a nice guy and will try to help

http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-3028756/green-drive-aaa-games.html

 

[Solandri]

chkdsk will only scan sectors with data on them unless you specify the /r option (scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors).

I would assume WD Lifeguard is doing a complete surface scan - used sectors and empty sectors, and finding errors on an empty sector.

Bad sectors are unavoidable with the huge capacities of modern HDDs. For this reason, HDDs come with several thousand (or several hundred thousand) unallocated sectors on a reserved part of the disk. If the drive detects a bad sector, it will simply remap that sector to one of these reserve sectors. In the future when the drive tries to use that bad sector, it will use the good reserve sector instead.

So a bad sector in itself isn't a warning flag. The HDD's S.M.A.R.T. statistics will keep count of how many reserved sectors are being used. Tools like Lifeguard which check the S.M.A.R.T. statistics will give a warning if the reserve sectors are nearly all used up, or are being used at an alarmingly fast rate. That's when you should replace the drive, not from a single bad sector.

 

[puttynene]

Your disk has bad sectors run "chkdsk /r /x" it will scan for the bad sectors and mark them as not usable.

 

[SuperSoph_WD]

Hey there, Brandon!

I'm sorry to hear about the bad sectors on your WD Blue HDD. 🙁 I'd strongly recommend you backup your data from it somewhere else before proceeding with the troubleshooting, in order to avoid any potential data loss.

However, as @Solandri mentioned, CHKDSK only concerns with the condition of the file system and reports errors only if there is any indication of a file corruption. It also checks the integrity of the system metafiles and attempts to correct any errors it may find in them. The CHKDSK's surface scan checks the cluster which contains a failed sector and marks it as bad. This is usually when you get a warning of a failing HDD.

WD's Data LifeGuard Diagnostics or any other HDD diagnostic tool is mainly concerned with the electro-mechanical operations of the HDD. These utilities interact with the drive's internal diagnostic and maintenance system, and they also list the S.M.A.R.T. results. The testing tools also help you determine whether or not the issue is HDD-related.

I'd suggest you run the DOS version of the DLG tool. You should be able to find the software, once you select your WD Product here. Follow the instructions and create a bootable flash drive with the utility, it will allow you to perform extensive testing on the drive without booting into Windows.

Keep us posted!
SuperSoph_WD