Using HDD with bad sectors

Discussion in 'SSD and HDD storage' started by SentinelAeon, Nov 1, 2015.

  1. SentinelAeon

    SentinelAeon Guest

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    Hi, i have got a simple task which i hope you can help me acomplish.
    I have a hdd with bad sectors, even more, some of them can't be repaired since hdd ran out of good space to replace them. Because of that, when i run hd scan in HDtune certain parts show as bad. I noticed that most of them are in the middle or at the end of a scan, the beginning is for now clean. What i would like to do is create a partition containing this good parts and install windows on that partition. That partition can be as small as 30GB.
    Now here is the question. If HDTune shows bad sectors in the middle on a 320GB disk i would say this is around 160GB. Would that mean if i go to computer managemenet and delete all partitions and then create 30GB partition, that this partition would be in the good part of the disk ? What i am asking is if the partition creating on 320GB is like this: no partitions and u make 30GB partition, space taken for this is from 0 - 30GB, and then if u make another partition of 60GB size it will use space from 30GB - 90GB ?

    I hope you can answer me this question. And i know disks with that many bad sectors aren't reliable and should be replaced. But that is not the question here, the question is can you separate good from the bad and do some tests on it, etc.

    Here is a picture of hdtune scan so u will know what i am taking about (not my screenshot, found it online). The red dot is what we are trying to avoid. So will creating a 30GB partition on an unpartitioned space make sure that this red dot isnt included in our newly created partition ? Thank you for your answers :)

    [​IMG]
     
  2. jura11

    jura11 Guest

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    Hi there

    I would try to in HD Tune Zero Fill,I know my older 2TB HDD has have lots of relocation errors and after Zero fill now is manageable and HDD is good and never have any issue with this HDD,I'm using this HDD almost 1 year without the single issue

    My old 2TB has have too few bad sectors which are not increasing anymore,not sure what I can recommend there

    I try to fill zeros and then I would test disk again,do you have any Relocation errors ? And S.M.A.R.T errors do you have any ?

    Thanks,Jura
     
  3. SentinelAeon

    SentinelAeon Guest

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    Hi there, your method would work if there were any reserved sectors left for the repair. However the disk already reparied all the bad sectors it could, so zero fill will not solve this. Usualy zero fill helps because disk repairs (relocates) bad sectors when a write on them fails.
     
  4. anticupidon

    anticupidon Ancient Guru

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    there are some things you can try.
    In the latest Parted Magic kit there is a modified Gparted which allows you to resize/partition ignoring bad blocks.
    More,with MHDD you can "cut" the bad sectors and have a hard drive with less capacity ,but without bad blocks.
    More,from Windows with CrystalDiskInfo you can adjust the sliders of S.M.A.R.T bad blocks errors and disk will be seen as good condition.(Depends if it is soft-error or another type of ECC error)
    But try this and keep in mind that in the end ,hard drives are cheaper than data recovery and there is no magic software that it automatically rejuvenate a failing hard disk.
     

  5. thatguy91

    thatguy91 Guest

    If there is physical damage to the platter it's stuffed, but if it's 'soft' bad sectors, a full wipe with diskpart and then a full proper format (standard format is just wipe system error plus verify, not write, to the rest of the disk) could restore it back without reallocated sectors. I believe this is the case because it zero fills the bad sectors since it's wiping it (bad sectors still have potentially recoverable data) Of course, by doing so you lose all data on the drive and it should literally become irretrievable.

    It's something I recommend for new mechanical drive installations. If there is a fault somewhere on the device you will find out before trusting it to data, and it seems to be beneficial in reducing drive issues down the track. After mentioning and them doing it, I don't know of anyone having a drive issue yet :).

    It takes a long time though. Remember writing at 100 MB/s on a 3 TB drive takes over 8 hours, and it's writing small blocks of data so the write speed is most likely much less. Since the process is effectively repeated (clean all followed by the diskpart's format), you need to allow for that.

    Now for the part that may actually interest you :).

    Try this:
    http://www.puransoftware.com/DiskFresh.html

    Free for home use.
     
  6. sophialively01

    sophialively01 Guest

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    If your HDD is showing bad sector which can't be repaired then I would advise you to recover the data from the bad sector first and you can use data recovery software like Stellar Phoenix Data Recovery to recover your data and once you will get the whole data recovered.I am not sure you can separate good and bad sectors but yes you can recover bad sector for sure.
     
  7. zipper

    zipper Maha Guru

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    I once used HDD regenerator - was lucky that there was just one bad sector that got fixed. But Samsung cloning software didn't allow to clone that fixed HDD to SSD; Easeus free didn't bother about the problem and cloned without problems.
     
  8. nick0323

    nick0323 Maha Guru

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    You just need to bit-wipe the HDD using Ccleaner and then re-format.
     
  9. thatguy91

    thatguy91 Guest

    If it is physical damage you can't really fix it beyond the illusion of being fixed through reallocated sectors. If it is caused by magnetic 'breakdown' then bad sectors (soft bad sectors) can be fixed simply by force writing the sector a couple of times and ideally those next to it. These soft bad sectors are usually replaced by reallocated sectors as well.

    Using Diskfresh can help on drives that have stuff stored on them for a long time. It reads every sector in raw mode, and rewrites them. It won't fix bad sectors, but will fix weak sectors caused by magentic breakdown, and reduce the risk of soft bad sectors.

    http://www.puransoftware.com/DiskFresh.html

    Works on Windows 10 just fine.
     
  10. ROTOR

    ROTOR Guest

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    hdd regenerator always solves my problems but always have 2 backups of my data
     

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