Laptop HDD has bad physical sectors?

jtpetch · Jul 19, 2015

Hi, I've got an issue with my laptop''s HDD. As the title would suggest, i have determined that it has bad physical sectors, meaning that it is probably damaged. The problem started a while ago when my laptop started to become very very slow and pretty much halted. I've tried to repair it many times using chkdsk (both on the laptop itself, and with it connected to my desktop), and HDD Regenerator, and neither were able to fix the issue. So I assume it is physical damage.
Now, what I'm wondering, is if there's any way to make the system just not use the damaged parts (its a 1 tb drive, so I can afford to lose some space).
Is this possible? Or am I just out of luck.
Thanks!

MarkW · Jul 19, 2015

Get anything you want to keep off of that drive. It is dying.

Then decide if you want to buy a new hard drive or an SSD to replace the dying drive. And get it ordered ASAP. Or take it to a shop to have it replaced. That drive could fail at any time. It is already having trouble reading things on the drive, which is why it is so slow now.

jtpetch · Jul 19, 2015

MarkW :

Sorry, but that doesn't really answer my question.
I know it's not in good shape, and there's no data I want off it.
I'd just like to still be able to use my laptop, as I've not got the money for a new drive right now.
It seems to me like, if there's say, a scratch somewhere on the disc in the drive, you should just be able to avoid that part of the disk, right?

MarkW · Jul 19, 2015

That is not how things work. Yes, there is at least a small scratch in there. But here is the problem. When the head hits the platter which is how scratches occur, they gouge up pieces of the platters. Now that platter is spinning at least 5400 RPM. And those "little" pieces are rolling around and are like small boulders inside of that drive. So each and every time the head hits one of those little boulders, even more boulders are created and a new scratch created as well.

Sometimes you can get away with it for a few weeks, maybe a month or two. But sooner or later, it is going to reach the point where it will no longer be able to read much of anything off of that drive.

bigpinkdragon286 · Jul 20, 2015

If bad sectors have been detected, they will be remapped, or marked as bad and no longer used. Problem is, bad sectors usually blossom out into more bad sectors, but there's really no guarantee as to how fast that will happen. When your hard drive is asked for data, if the data is being stored in a failing location, the drive will attempt to read it multiple times before reporting back, so the operating system may not actually realize the hard drive location being used is going bad until it's already lost some data. A disk that is having to reread sectors of a disk multiple times to obtain a successful read can drastically reduce the performance, and there's no guarantee the drive or operating system will be able to recover the data before it's damaged. You can use the disk as long as you want, just do so with the knowledge it's going to get worse with time. You could be looking at days or even years, depending on the usage conditions for the drive. At least try to back up anything that's important to you, then you can use the disk into the ground, or until you can't stand it's data corruption, the nuisance of disk scans, or degraded performance metrics, and finally replace it.

This is one case where, partitioning a hard disk can actually become useful. If the damage is near the end of the addressable storage, you could partition around the damage and allow plenty of margin for the bad sectors to spread over time, without the risk of your operating system attempting to write near the bad location(s). If the damage is somewhere in the middle, it can become a tad awkward, so probably isn't something you want to attempt to fiddle with, without first learning what you're doing.

jaguarskx · Jul 20, 2015

I had one hard drive that developed bad sectors years ago. I think it was was Western Digital 120GB hard drive. Basically it developed 20GB worth of bad sector which dropped the capacity down to 100GB. I continued to use if for about two years mostly just as an experiment to determine if more bad sectors would develop. I used it as a "thrash drive" from that point on where I use it to store a lot of temporary data. I basically ripped my DVDs to that drive and during the encoding process I would save the movie file to the defective HDD and move it to a good drive once the encoding process has been completed.

I used the drive for about another two year and it never developed another bad sector. I ultimately decided to replace the drive with a higher capacity drive. Does this mean your HDD will stabilize and not develop anymore bad sectors? Maybe, maybe not. If you cannot afford a new hard drive and you don't really care about the data on the HDD, then sure you can continue to use it. Just be aware that if the HDD does die you will not be able to use the laptop until you replace the HDD and re-install Windows.

jtpetch · Jul 20, 2015

Ok, but how would I make the drive not use the bad sectors?

jaguarskx · Jul 20, 2015

Once bad sectors are detected Windows will not write data to those sectors. If bad sectors develop in sectors that have data, then the associated file(s) will become damaged and unusable.

jtpetch · Jul 20, 2015

So I would have windows check the drive, and it would just detect bad sectors and not write to them then? Would I d othis through right clicking on the drive, and going into properties?

jaguarskx · Jul 20, 2015

Right click the drive and select "Properties".

Click "Tools" tab.

Look for "Error-Checking".

MarkW · Jul 20, 2015

Check Disk... It will write to, and then read back data from every sector. But as I wrote above, those tiny boulders are still going to be in there and they are going to continue to create more and more problems.

When I say get your data off of that drive and replace it, I was not joking. The drive is literally in a death spiral.

jtpetch · Jul 22, 2015

jaguarskx :

Error checking finds no issues with the disk

MarkW · Jul 22, 2015

jtpetch :

I guess I do not understand how you got from the original post here that said:

Hi, I've got an issue with my laptop''s HDD. As the title would suggest, it have determined that it has bad physical sectors, meaning that it is probably damaged. The problem started a while ago when my laptop started to become very very slow and pretty much halted.

to what you just posted.

jtpetch · Jul 22, 2015

MarkW :

jtpetch :

I guess I do not understand how you got from the original post here that said:

Hi, I've got an issue with my laptop''s HDD. As the title would suggest, it have determined that it has bad physical sectors, meaning that it is probably damaged. The problem started a while ago when my laptop started to become very very slow and pretty much halted.

to what you just posted.

Er, sorry, that does seem confusing, doesn't it...
While Windows error checking finds no problems, I know for a fact there are.

bigpinkdragon286 · Jul 22, 2015

Error checking isn't going to list out every old issue. Old errors that have been dealt with successfully will not be reported, only old errors that have not been dealt with and new errors will be listed, so essentially, what this tells you is, all of the old issues have been successfully dealt with. This is no way should be taken to mean the disk is fine. It just means that all data structures as the file system expects to see them and all storage locations (provided you actually did a surface test) are returning data as they should for the time being.

jaguarskx · Jul 22, 2015

Use Macrorit to see how many bad sectors you have. It checks each sector so it will take some time for it to complete. A 500GB 5400RPM hard drive takes around 75 - 90 minutes to be fully scanned.

http://macrorit.com/disk-surface-test/disk-surface-test.html

I recommend downloading it form the MajorGeeks link since CNET tends to include other crap when you download the installer from them. The program is nothing more than than a GUI (graphic user interface) for the Windows command prompt ChkDsk (or check disk).

jtpetch · Jul 22, 2015

Scanning... This'll take a while, lol.
Now, you said it is basically chkdsk, with a GUI?
Well, last time I did a chkdsk, it stopped at 10%, so, I guess we'll see how this goes.

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