Reasons for bad sectors

[asheesh1_2000]

Can anyone tell me after all what causes a HDD to have bad sectors.

I had a 1 TB WD SATA internal HDD which developed BAD sector, not sure why. I thought since I was using too much of torrents, however now my SEAGATE has also developed some when I hv stopped using torrents totally.

1. Can using torrent bring bad sectors to hdd

2. what other reasons can cause it.

 

[Emerald]

1. heat
2. overclocked PCI bus speeds
3. drop it or jarr it
4. Weariness(Aging)

 

[sminlal]

I can't imagine how overclocking could possibly affect a hard drive...

The coatings and tolerances on hard drive platters are amazingly precise. Tiny manufacturing defects such as a layer that's a little too thin or thick in a certain place, or was applied at the wrong temperature, or was applied to a substrate that was contaminated, can lead to imperfections in the magnetic material that cause it to be out-of-spec and marginally less able to accept data.

 

[asheesh1_2000]

1. heat
2. overclocked PCI bus speeds
3. drop it or jarr it
4. Weariness(Aging)

heat - probably, as i hv a hexacore and GTX 460. But then how do I prevent it?

 

[hang-the-9]

You can't prevent a drive from going bad, you can only minimize the chances. Mount it in a isolated rubber-gommet cage (you can get rubber bushings to go on the screws to minimize vibrations), install a fan to blow over it. That's really it.

 

[ariant]

1. Can using torrent bring bad sectors to hdd ?

Yes ... due the data indexing. This action overloading the hard drive.

 

[bryanl]

Torrents damage sectors, but pornography repairs them, so logically a torrent of pornography will have no effect.

 

[sminlal]

heat - probably, as i hv a hexacore and GTX 460. But then how do I prevent it?

To paraphrase the short-lived and long-dead TV Series "Quark" - "If it is too hot, cool it".

Seriously. Put the drive behind some fans and make sure cool air from outside the case is flowing around it.

 

[asheesh1_2000]

Torrents damage sectors, but pornography repairs them, so logically a torrent of pornography will have no effect.

????

 

[asheesh1_2000]

To paraphrase the short-lived and long-dead TV Series "Quark" - "If it is too hot, cool it".

Seriously. Put the drive behind some fans and make sure cool air from outside the case is flowing around it.

can not add more fans, as though my power supply is OK, UPS is not high on WATT. I hv opened the CPU cabinet instead, hope it helps.

 

[asheesh1_2000]

Is it possible somehow to make sure that nothing gets written on the bad sectors. My 80 GB HDD has some and whenever I download something on it I get the error while it reading it or trying to copy it.

 

[sminlal]

The drive itself will reallocate the bad sectors the next time they're written to or if it can successfully read the data from them. If it can't read the data from them or if they never get written to then they'll stay bad and you'll get read errors every time you try to read them.

The best thing to do would be to get copies of everything from the drive and then format it. That should guarantee that next access to the bad sectors will be a write which will cause the reallocation to happen.

 

[hang-the-9]

Is it possible somehow to make sure that nothing gets written on the bad sectors. My 80 GB HDD has some and whenever I download something on it I get the error while it reading it or trying to copy it.

If you like your data, get a new drive now. Windows will do its best to mark any bad sectors and not use them, but that is just a cover-up for a drive that has a high chance of failure now. Re-installing or reformatting anything on the drive will not fix the fact that it has issues. Many drive issue are physical in nature and can't be fixed by a format.

 

[asheesh1_2000]

Best answer selected by asheesh1_2000.