Some questions about hard drives

[bojan_vladek]

Hello people. I have 4 questions about hard drives.

But first, here's the thing. I bought a new external hard drive. The old one had started making weird noises and so I ran a test on its performance (HD Tune) and it turns out the drive is dying. So I freaked out and bought a new one to save the entire stuff in it (436 gb video games 40gb music, 700 gb movies).

Right now I am copying the data and I have discovered that there are corrupted parts (if not too much). My questions might be irrational forgive me if so:

1- Will the corruption of the old drive (corrupted data blocks or whatever) spread to the new drive and corrupt it too (like when I copy a corrupted song or something)? Or is it the 'files' that are corrupted, thus meaning my new drive is a safe haven now?

2- Some songs are not corrupted but they definitely sound different. So, are they partially corrupted? I was able to copy them. But I'm pretty sure they didn't use to sound the way they do now.

3- Will formatting the old drive clear the corrupted segments? ( I want the damn thing back )

4- Will the new drive too get corrupted eventually? Why does this happen? Is there a way to prevent it?

Thanks already

~vladic

 

[vagrantsoul]

from my personal experiene,
1 it (corruption) will just affect those particular files, not spread ... unless it's from a virus (scan the drive)
2 possibly, define different
3 again possible, they may get recovered, but the segments might have physical damage
4 all hdd's fail eventually sadly

 

[kittle]

1- Will the corruption of the old drive (corrupted data blocks or whatever) spread to the new drive and corrupt it too (like when I copy a corrupted song or something)? Or is it the 'files' that are corrupted, thus meaning my new drive is a safe haven now?

Unless you have a virus, the corruption wont "spread". but when you copy the already corrupted files they may fail, or copy with bad data. When you find these, its best to delete and re-download from the source.

2- Some songs are not corrupted but they definitely sound different. So, are they partially corrupted? I was able to copy them. But I'm pretty sure they didn't use to sound the way they do now.

Unless you are using a different music player it should sound exactly the same. You can always try playing the same song from your old drive to compare.

3- Will formatting the old drive clear the corrupted segments? ( I want the damn thing back )

Maybe.. maybe not. At best it will buy you some more time before the more segments get corrupted. At worst, the drive will stop working an you will have a new doorstop. Best advice is to copy ALL your data off it and then recycle.

4- Will the new drive too get corrupted eventually? Why does this happen? Is there a way to prevent it?

All drives fail eventually due to wear and tear, handling, power issues, and environment (hot/cold). Some fail quickly (within days) -- thats what a warranty/RMA is for. Others will take years to fail -- thats what a savings account and backups are for. I have had drives fail after a few months. But I have other drives that still work fine after 10-15 years.

 

[geofelt]

There are two types of "corruption"
Logical and physical.
Physically, a hard drive will use a spare sector if it can't properly write to a given sector.
In time, all the spares can get used up and performance suffers along the way.
The hard drive vendor will have a utility that will scan the drive and attempt to recover bad sectors. This is a destructive process.
This is not the same as windows initializing the drive; it may take hours.

Sometimes, you can get corruption logically.
For example a catalog pointer may not get updated in sync with an update.
A power failure might do this.
Virus or malware can also damage files.

The best way to keep a hard drive good is to not let it get too hot.
Many start/stop cycles can also reduce longevity.

 

[bojan_vladek]

Thanks for all the info guys. I love this forum. Always finding answers from people willing to help.

Weird thing is, this drive is maybe 3 years old or less. It's My Book Studio 2TB from WD. Supposed to be good stuff. Anyway, I used it's capacity nicely and used it quite often too. I think it's just that the drive got old. It's just that my old-old HDDs are still running. They're like 6 years old or something now. Not a dent or anything. Not corruption of any kind. Funny something like this happens to a WD.

So I'll redownload the corrupted stuff.
I'll format the drive and see what happens.
I'll scan the lot while I'm at it.

Thanks a lot guys

~vladic

 

[geofelt]

You want to initialize it, not just format it.
WD has a hard drive utility, "data lifeguard" I believe expressly for their drives.