Question HDD storage dilemma.

[bendipa]

Hi,

I have an old 500 GB HDD , which I have used for years as USB back-up storage. It was formatted to ext4 being a Linux user. In recent months it's started to play up, with my folders and files suddenly becoming read-only, and even then won't open, nor can permissions be changed. If plugged in, the disk even caused problems booting up or shutting down, when my PC would hang.

Having realised the disk might be on its way out, I thought I'd try cleaning it and reformatting it to NTFS. Having done this a month ago, under Windows using diskpart, the disk is now reading with Crystaldiskinfo as 'good'', whereas previously it displayed a 'caution'. Also the chkdsk command shows no sign of errors or bad sectors. Meanwhile. I've backed-up all my data onto the disk again and so far, no problems this time with reading it or opening holders/files with Linux.

So my question is: Has cleaning this disk effectively repaired it, or is it likely to cause issues again in the near future? So far in the past month it's been fine.

 

[USAFRet]

Has cleaning this disk effectively repaired it

Irrelevant.

That drive could die in the next 5 minutes.
Or last another decade.

There is NO way to predict the lifespan of a single drive. No matter what you've done with it.

Prepare for that eventual death, because it WILL come.

 

[Lutfij]

So my question is: Has cleaning this disk effectively repaired it, or is it likely to cause issues again in the near future? So far in the past month it's been fine.
I'm curious to learn how much free space was on the drive when you were experiencing the issue. I'm also curious to learn of the age of the drive. A decade old, at least? If so, you would need to retire the drive.

 

[Bob.B]

Hi,

I have an old 500 GB HDD , which I have used for years as USB back-up storage. It was formatted to ext4 being a Linux user. In recent months it's started to play up, with my folders and files suddenly becoming read-only, and even then won't open, nor can permissions be changed. If plugged in, the disk even caused problems booting up or shutting down, when my PC would hang.

Having realised the disk might be on its way out, I thought I'd try cleaning it and reformatting it to NTFS. Having done this a month ago, under Windows using diskpart, the disk is now reading with Crystaldiskinfo as 'good'', whereas previously it displayed a 'caution'. Also the chkdsk command shows no sign of errors or bad sectors. Meanwhile. I've backed-up all my data onto the disk again and so far, no problems this time with reading it or opening holders/files with Linux.

So my question is: Has cleaning this disk effectively repaired it, or is it likely to cause issues again in the near future? So far in the past month it's been fine.

Run it and expect it to croak.

or

Buy a new disk and expect it to croak.