Safe to use semi-corrupt HDD for OS?

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TerryFawkes

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Dec 18, 2013
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I'm currently building a new PC and I want to have my OS on a separate HDD than my personal files. The HDD I want to use for the OS is a Toshiba MK5056GSY 500GB SATA/300 7200RPM 16MB 2.5" HDD that has four partitions. The main and largest partition, ~450 Gbs, corrupted and is seemingly unusable. (I tried formatting it last night through disk manager and let it run overnight, it never finished.) The remaining partitions end up being ~20 Gb, enough for an OS and programs. Is it a bad idea to combine the remaining partitions into one and use it for my OS? (I'm not concerned about not having a recovery partition on the drive; I plan on getting a new one fairly soon, but not soon enough to wait for it.)

If not, would I be better off using a Hitachi GST Travelstar 5K320 250GB 5400 RPM 8MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 2.5" HDD (or a WD600BEVS-75RST0 60GB 5400 RPM 8MB SATA 2.5" HDD) for my OS and still having the other for personal files, or should I just put everything on my WD Blue 1 Tb 7200RPM 64MB HDD? (Or does it depend?) Thank you in advance!
 
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Boogieman_WD
Hey TerryFawkes. First I'd say that it is never a good idea to use a failing drive, especially for critical information. I'd recommend that you download the manufacturer's diagnostic tool and test the drive with it and see if there are a lot of bad sectors. If this is the reason for the drive to be failing, the HDD will continue to "generate" bad sectors until it dies completely. On the other hand you could try the chkdsk command in CMD with recovery and fix options and see if it helps recover the corrupted partition. You could also try formatting the drive via CMD instead of Disk Management to see if you succeed this way.
Even if you manage to get your OS on that drive, I'd recommend not to put any important data on it and keep it only...
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Boogieman_WD

Boogieman_WD

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Jul 31, 2014
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Hey TerryFawkes. First I'd say that it is never a good idea to use a failing drive, especially for critical information. I'd recommend that you download the manufacturer's diagnostic tool and test the drive with it and see if there are a lot of bad sectors. If this is the reason for the drive to be failing, the HDD will continue to "generate" bad sectors until it dies completely. On the other hand you could try the chkdsk command in CMD with recovery and fix options and see if it helps recover the corrupted partition. You could also try formatting the drive via CMD instead of Disk Management to see if you succeed this way.
Even if you manage to get your OS on that drive, I'd recommend not to put any important data on it and keep it only on your healthy HDD. Besides, 20GB is not sufficient enough space for an OS partition, unless you are planning on installing Windows XP for example.

Hope that helps.
Boogieman_WD
 
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McDuncun

McDuncun

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May 6, 2013
987
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Short answer: no..
Long answer: noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo...

Hahahahaha kidding, look man it should be fine but the now full 20 gb partition is on the same faulty drive... that would make me nervous. But if it`s only for a short while then go ahead. But hurry... "Winter is Coming"
 
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