Can I use HDD that has a bad sectors?

[EJLovesKatie]

I have a 2TB Barracuda that i bought in June 2014. These early days of December it started acting up, scanned it using linux and detected 32 bad sectors in it. So I backed up my data, bought a wd 4TB, and used my spare 2TB as my primary. I then reformatted the faulty 2TB, and as I read through different forums, Windows marks those bad sectors as unusable once you perform a full format. So, is it safe to store files in that drive or not? I’m having a hard time letting the drive go, that’s 2TB and it is like i know it’s been damaged but i feel like i can still use it to store media files temporarily.

 

[SkyNetRising]

Can you post screenshot from Hdtune health?

Generally - if drive starts developing bad sectors, data on it no longer can be considered safe. But possibly you can still use it to hold some non-important data ( you're not afraid to loose ).

 

[jaguarskx]

In general it is possible, but I recommend using only for temporary data.

For example, back in the mid 2000's I had a 2 year old 160GB WD hard drive that developed around 12GB of bad sectors within a couple of days. None of my data / games were lost; I think I was using around 50GB of the HDD. I quickly replaced it with a new hard drive and copied everything on the failing WD HDD to the new HDD.

I continued to use the failing HDD though as a scratch drive because back then I was ripping my entire DVD collection and encoding them. Basically all the DVD files were ripped to the failing HDD and videos were encoded to that HDD. The finished video file would then be moved to a different drive. I think I continued to use that HDD for another 4 years without any more bad sectors popping up.

 

[EJLovesKatie]

Can you post screenshot from Hdtune health?

Generally - if drive starts developing bad sectors, data on it no longer can be considered safe. But possibly you can still use it to hold some non-important data ( you're not afraid to loose ).

Hello, here's the screenshot.

 

[marksavio]

as long as you run "chkdsk /r /x" on it, windows will repage and attempte to repair that drive for you to avoid bad sectors.
if you get freezes during the process, try rerunning without repair and just fix to avoid the bad sectors "chkdsk /f /x". if it freezes again, time to retire that HDD and backup what data you have there and buy a new one.

 

[SkyNetRising]

Hello, here's the screenshot.

Health of the drive looks good.
If there were any bad blocks, they were not hardware related.

 

[EJLovesKatie]

Hello, here's the screenshot.

Health of the drive looks good.
If there were any bad blocks, they were not hardware related.

Hey, sorry i posted the wrong image. Here's the correct one...

 

[USAFRet]

Once a drive starts throwing errors, it is suspect. Don't trust it for any critical data.

And you should always have a good backup routine anyway.

 

[SkyNetRising]

Well yes. This one has some damage.
400 pending sectors - those need to be resolved.

Use mhdd - operation scan with relocate option enabled.
http://hddguru.com/software/2005.10.02-MHDD/