Failing HD, checkdisk and diagnostic tools

[xhobbesx]

Hello everyone. My 320 GB external hard drive had a problem before where checkdisk would get stuck at a certain percentage in Step 5.

I've since backed up the drive and then reformatted it. I did a quick reformat (should I do a long reformat?) and then ran the hard drive with checkdisk overnight. I have about .02% in bad sectors. Is that a bad thing? Can I still use the drive as an external drive safely or do I use this drive at my own risk? Also, should run any other HDD diagnostic tools?


Here is the summary of the checkdisk findings.

CHKDSK is verifying files (stage 1 of 5)...
256 file records processed.
File verification completed.
0 large file records processed.
0 bad file records processed.
0 EA records processed.
0 reparse records processed.
CHKDSK is verifying indexes (stage 2 of 5)...
274 index entries processed.
Index verification completed.
0 unindexed files scanned.
0 unindexed files recovered.
CHKDSK is verifying security descriptors (stage 3 of 5)...
256 file SDs/SIDs processed.
Security descriptor verification completed.
10 data files processed.
CHKDSK is verifying Usn Journal...
440 USN bytes processed.
Usn Journal verification completed.
CHKDSK is verifying file data (stage 4 of 5)...
240 files processed.
File data verification completed.
CHKDSK is verifying free space (stage 5 of 5)...
78117749 free clusters processed.
Free space verification is complete.
Adding 18660 bad clusters to the Bad Clusters File.
Correcting errors in the master file table's (MFT) BITMAP attribute.
CHKDSK discovered free space marked as allocated in the volume bitmap.
Windows has made corrections to the file system.

312568831 KB total disk space.
21568 KB in 5 files.
8 KB in 11 indexes.
74640 KB in bad sectors.
76255 KB in use by the system.
65536 KB occupied by the log file.
312396360 KB available on disk.

4096 bytes in each allocation unit.
78142207 total allocation units on disk.
78099090 allocation units available on disk.

 

[Emerald]

I would run the manufacturer's disk utility and do a diagnoses on the drive. Also with the utility do a low level format which might retrieve some of the disk space since windows marks it a bad sector if it takes to long to read the area.

 

[xhobbesx]

So I went to the manufacturer site and ran their program and it said that it there were too many bad sectors detected. I guess that means its pretty much done right?

 

[Emerald]

is the drive still under warranty? If yes RMA it

 

[xhobbesx]

unfortunately no. I'll probably just trash it unless there are other uses for a HD full of bad sectors...

thanks for your replies