Disk Health Report, what's my next step?

[Transducer]

Hello everyone!

Yesterday, when I booted up my Compaq Presario CQ5210F, it went straight to the Diagnostic tools and told me that while everything else was fine, my hard drive was facing 'imminent failure'.

Well, I've managed to save all of my important files now, and I've done a reading of the disk with Piriform's Defraggler, and this is what it came up with:

(please click image for better view of the numbers and details)


So apparently the problem is that my 'Relocated Sectors Count' and 'Reallocation Event Count' are bad or incorrect.

From what little I've read there might not be a way to actually fix them, but to block them? How would I do that? And is there anything else I could/should do to try and save my hard drive?

Lastly, if nothing else can be resolved, how long would you say it might last? Supposedly I need to keep checking and see if those numbers increase on the chart?

 

[fzabkar]

I would have stopped trusting your drive long ago. The numbers will only grow.

 

[Transducer]

Well I read that they might not grow and if so it should live awhile more. I've done a virus scan of the computer and taken out a few things, and I notice that it might be a bit faster now. Also I've done a health check and the number hasn't gone up since then. Not yet anyway. Is it possible it was a deadly virus and not a ruined hard drive, or was that probably a coincidence?

 

[fzabkar]

I can't imagine that malware has become that sophisticated, although I can envisage how malware might corrupt a drive's firmware. In fact you can do just that by mis-applying HDDHackr to a WD drive.

However, in your case I would think that the bad sectors are genuine.

 

[Transducer]

That is very likely indeed. I do hope it lasts at least another three weeks, given some big moving plans I have.