What to do with an HDD which have current pending sectors

[Sohaib]

So 1 of my WD 4 TB HDD is going bad, its only 1.5 years old. It has 6 current pending sectors and 1 bad sector logged in HD Tune.
I regularly monitor my mechanical drives (8 installed) so i was able to catch it early and was able to transfer 99.9% of the data to a new HDD (2 files were unreadable, acceptable loss. drive was over 90% full). However i don't want to trash this drive just yet and want to use it for non critical stuff as its out of warranty.
What should i do before copying data into it? I tried copying 20 GB data on it (big files, 4gb each) and its taking forever. Should i scan the drive first and mark bad sectors before using it? Any recommended software to use?

 

[The Paladin]

Use the Error Checking utility built in to Microsoft Windows.
Double Click (My) Computer, and right-click the hard disk.
On the shortcut menu, click Properties, and on the Tools tab in the Properties dialog box.
Click Check Now in the Error-Checking Status area.
In the Check Disk dialog box, select the Automatically Fix File System Errors check box, select the Scan For And Attempt Recovery Of Bad Sectors check box, and then click Start.
View Windows help on detecting and repairing disk errors for more information.

each manufacturer has also additional free software to perform more deeply scan and repair techniques

 

[Sohaib]

I am currently doing surface test with EaseUS Partition Master and its showing 228 hours remaining. Definitely its having trouble reading some of the early sectors. Its stuck at 0.19% and have already marked 101 bad sectors.
I wonder if the hdd is that bad then how i was able to copy around 3.3 TB of data at over 100 MB/s.
Is windows error checking faster?

EDIT: I stopped the scan and did error check, windows took grand total of 5 secs and returned no errors found. I think i should 0 fill the drive. Any good software to do that?

 

[molletts]

EDIT: I stopped the scan and did error check, windows took grand total of 5 secs and returned no errors found. I think i should 0 fill the drive. Any good software to do that?

DBAN will do it. It can also read back what it has written to check that it was successful (use the "Verify all passes" option). You could have it write multiple different patterns as a more thorough test, although this would obviously take longer. I've had drives that are fine with all zeroes but fail with other patterns. (I normally use the Linux badblocks utility which does 55, AA, FF and 00 patterns.)

Just be careful to select the right drive - maybe physically disconnect other drives first just to be 100% sure!

 

[Sohaib]

EDIT: I stopped the scan and did error check, windows took grand total of 5 secs and returned no errors found. I think i should 0 fill the drive. Any good software to do that?

DBAN will do it. It can also read back what it has written to check that it was successful (use the "Verify all passes" option). You could have it write multiple different patterns as a more thorough test, although this would obviously take longer. I've had drives that are fine with all zeroes but fail with other patterns. (I normally use the Linux badblocks utility which does 55, AA, FF and 00 patterns.)

Just be careful to select the right drive - maybe physically disconnect other drives first just to be 100% sure!

I am doing zero fill with HD Tune Pro currently, its almost 25% finished, should take another 5-6 hours and hopefully that will mark the bad sectors for future.
From the looks of it the bad sector are right at the start of drive, 4-15 GB mark, that's where it progressed extremely slowly and after that its writing at an average of 135 MB/s.

 

[Sohaib]

Update, i let hdd complete 0 fill overnight and next day i prepared the hdd for data copy and 1 minute in system got un-responsive. Had to plug off main switch and turn on pc after 2 minutes and windows kept getting stuck at loading loop (even though this hdd is empty) so i had to take it out of system.

Currently i have put it in an external enclosure to try further troubleshoot it on laptop but its safe to assume the hdd is dead. Kinda miracle that i was able to recover 99% data yesterday and it was returning over 100 MB/s transfer rate and today it even stop windows from booting.