Prolonging the life of a drive with bad sectors.

[Banqu0]

Let me preface this by first making it clear that I understand the ramifications of using a drive that is likely on it's deathbed. That being said, I have 2TB Seagate drive that developed bad sectors on 2 of the partitions last year. I continued to use it and more developed slowly over the course of a few months. It was then removed, and it's been sitting in an anti-static bag for the last 6 months. As it is the largest drive that I own, I thought it would be good if it were still usable for non critical data.

I installed it about 2 hours ago and windows froze on boot. Then, I booted to Knoppix and deleted the offending partitions. Windows then booted normally. The 2 partitions that had bad sectors constitutes roughly 500GB of the drive. I can certainly make do with 1.5 TB. My question is: if I do not partition that part of the drive so no read/writes are ever performed on the area with bad sectors, will that decrease the chances of further developing more bad sectors?

EDIT: Current SMART info

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskInfo 6.5.2 Shizuku Edition x64 (C) 2008-2015 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

OS : Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 [6.1 Build 7601] (x64)
Date : 2016/01/07 21:21:21

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
(4) ST2000DM001-1CH164
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Model : ST2000DM001-1CH164
Firmware : CC27
Serial Number : *********
Disk Size : 2000.3 GB (8.4/137.4/2000.3/2000.3)
Buffer Size : Unknown
Queue Depth : 32
# of Sectors : 3907029168
Rotation Rate : 7200 RPM
Interface : Serial ATA
Major Version : ACS-2
Minor Version : ACS-3 Revision 3b
Transfer Mode : SATA/300 | SATA/600
Power On Hours : 6448 hours
Power On Count : 327 count
Temperature : 43 C (109 F)
Health Status : Caution
Features : S.M.A.R.T., APM, 48bit LBA, NCQ
APM Level : 8080h [ON]
AAM Level : ----

-- S.M.A.R.T. --------------------------------------------------------------
ID Cur Wor Thr RawValues(6) Attribute Name
01 _90 _82 __6 000007876ED5 Read Error Rate
03 _97 _96 __0 000000000000 Spin-Up Time
04 100 100 _20 0000000001B5 Start/Stop Count
05 _96 _96 _10 000000001258 Reallocated Sectors Count
07 _69 _60 _30 00020104E6F5 Seek Error Rate
09 _93 _93 __0 000000001930 Power-On Hours
0A 100 100 _97 000000000000 Spin Retry Count
0C 100 100 _20 000000000147 Power Cycle Count
B7 _81 _81 __0 000000000013 Vendor Specific
B8 100 100 _99 000000000000 End-to-End Error
BB __1 __1 __0 000000002B5D Reported Uncorrectable Errors
BC 100 _94 __0 000A000B0027 Command Timeout
BD _75 _75 __0 000000000019 High Fly Writes
BE _57 _54 _45 00002B29002B Airflow Temperature
BF 100 100 __0 000000000000 G-Sense Error Rate
C0 100 100 __0 000000000078 Power-off Retract Count
C1 100 100 __0 0000000003FA Load/Unload Cycle Count
C2 _43 _46 __0 00120000002B Temperature
C5 _98 _82 __0 000000000158 Current Pending Sector Count
C6 _98 _82 __0 000000000158 Uncorrectable Sector Count
C7 200 200 __0 000000000000 UltraDMA CRC Error Count
F0 100 253 __0 6E6D00001912 Head Flying Hours
F1 100 253 __0 00030521B72E Total Host Writes
F2 100 253 __0 0001F946F255 Total Host Reads



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[USAFRet]

Why have you not sent this back under warranty?

 

[yoji]

Only you can make that call.. for me.. I would never trust such a drive and its all to easy to start out saying "usable for non critical data".. but before you know it .. its a real PITA when you lose that data.
So for me (with a good job where I can afford it throw dodgy drives away) I would say don't do it.
But your circumstances I guess are very different to mine.. so its up to you.. but take care
Cheers

 

[Banqu0]

Why have you not sent this back under warranty?

The drive is long past the expiry date for the warranty

 

[USAFRet]

Why have you not sent this back under warranty?

The drive is long past the expiry date for the warranty

It's dead, Jim.
Physical bad sectors is not walled off by 'partitions'.

 

[Banqu0]

Only you can make that call.. for me.. I would never trust such a drive and its all to easy to start out saying "usable for non critical data".. but before you know it .. its a real PITA when you lose that data.
So for me (with a good job where I can afford it throw dodgy drives away) I would say don't do it.
But your circumstances I guess are very different to mine.. so its up to you.. but take care
Cheers

Most of what is on there has already been backed up to DVD-R. Having the whole drive in the computer saves my from having to fish for DVDs (and there are a lot of them). I'm really just curious if my reasoning behind partially using the drive has any merit.

 

[Banqu0]

Should the issues be with defects on an isolated area of the drive platter and not with the other parts of the drive, should avoiding that area of the drive prevent file system problems?

EDIT: I fail at text formatting. Sorry

 

[USAFRet]

If and only if that 'isolated area' does not grow.
It probably will.

Don't put anything on that drive you can bear to lose.

Drive space is cheap. Fridge magnets are cool.

 

[Banqu0]

If and only if that 'isolated area' does not grow.
It probably will.

Don't put anything on that drive you can bear to lose.

Drive space is cheap. Fridge magnets are cool.

Very well. I guess there's no way for this drive to cheat death. Thanks to both of you for taking the time to respond.

 

[jsmithepa]

This is totally wacko, has no logical basis and I won't even attempt to explain, but I would mount the drive sideways, do a complete format (not quick), will take hours. At the end of format, make a note of currently known bad sectors, monitor it. If it keeps creeping up noneless, oh well, we tried.

 

[Banqu0]

This is totally wacko, has no logical basis and I won't even attempt to explain, but I would mount the drive sideways, do a complete format (not quick), will take hours. At the end of format, make a note of currently known bad sectors, monitor it. If it keeps creeping up noneless, oh well, we tried.

Just out of curiosity, how did you come up with this?