Time to reformat my hard drive?

[Guest]

Hi all,

I've been having a heck of a time getting my WD Passport USB-powered HDD to work correctly lately. It's a few years old and it's supposed to function as my back up to keep all of my docs, mp3, and avi safe. A little while ago I started getting error messages when I tried to copy files either to or from the HDD: "Cannot copy 04 Track 4. The drive cannot find the sector requested." At one point I was unable to play any media files from the hard drive (which I only do occasionally anyway) until I installed a new driver package onto my computer (a netbook currently, eee pc).

I ran chkdsk and windows found 1 cross-linked file and corrected it. Now it seems fine when I run chkdsk. I also defraged as it had been a while - no problems with that. So what gives? I can't find the problem but the drive still isn't working 100%. Is it time to reformat? And if so, what's the best way to go about doing that? I've never had to reformat a HDD before. Thanks for your help!!

 

[aford10]

First back up your files somewhere else.

To format the hard drive:
start-->right click on my computer-->manage-->disk management-->find your drive in the top window-->right click on it-->format

 

[Guest]

Thanks! That doesn't sound too hard. Do you think this is the best/only way to fix the drive?

 

[aford10]

For a backup drive, probably. Since that drive doesn't have the OS, drivers, or any programs installed on it, there's very little work that has to be done.

Without a more thorough description, or seeing it myself, I can't guarantee that the format will take care of it. But it's an easy first step.

 

[Paperdoc]

When you do this, make sure the format type is a Full Format, not quick. A Full Format takes a very long time, but it checks every disk sector and marks any bad ones for never use again. This will prevent having a bad sector used for a new file.

 

[aford10]

^ Agreed