HDD is failing. Can I do anything to make sure its completely dead before buying a new one.

[fasugg]

I have an ADATA Portable HDD of 2TB storage. Admittedly the HDD did get tossed around to a lot of friends but I was expecting viruses, not hard drive failure. So a few weeks ago i noticed that many of the files I tried to open in my hdd would just not open, the hdd would fail to respond and i'd have to replug it whereby the file would still not open. I formatted it and backed up what I could, the problem still persisted. After that i tried to do a format through the DiskPart cmd command and after that the disk just became raw. It shows up in the virtual disk manager of windows but it doesnt format completely, goes through to 100 percent but then a message pops up saying that the format couldnt be completed. Is there any way I can repair or make sure it's dead cause I need one so it's either this one or a new one
Cheerio

 

[Eximo]

Might check with the manufacturer of the hard disk itself (I don't assume it is ADATA) and get their disk utility. A complete format would normally remove bad sectors from the partition table. If the logic board or read-write head is failing, not much you can do.

Besides, when a hard drive becomes untrustworthy at all, it is time to replace it.

 

[USAFRet]

Admittedly the HDD did get tossed around to a lot of friends but I was expecting viruses, not hard drive failure

I'd assume one or more of them actually dropped it...🙁

 

[D_Know_WD]

Hi there fasugg,

As you have already backed up the data that was stored on it, you may try to take it out of the enclosure and test it with brand specific tool as Eximo already suggested. If the results show that there are bad sectors on it, I would say that there is no way to stop the degrading process. You could eventually slow it down a bit with formatting or writing zeros.
Of course, taking the drive out of the enclosure will void the warranty, if any.

Cheers,
D_Know_WD

 

[fzabkar]

I would examine the SMART report with a tool such as CrystalDiskInfo.

http://crystalmark.info/software/CrystalDiskInfo/index-e.html

Look for reallocated, pending, or uncorrectable sectors.

Other SMART tools are HD Sentinel, HDDScan, smartmontools (GSmartctl).