Hard drive with 99.9 % bad sectors.

[califauna]

Hi Gurus,

I have just done some tests on a Barracuda 7200.12 drive ST31000528AS which is not accessible in XP/7/Linux.

I have posted below the result of a SCAN using MHDD in DOS. The bad blocks begin almost immediately (before the scan has even reached 0.1 %) After a while I started skipping through. Identical results are achieved when rescanned.

Could anyone speculate on what that might mean (head crash/firmware/PCB error)?

The only click that can be heard is on powering up the drive one relatively loud clunk / click can be heard. After that it stays spun up but silent. Firmware has been automatically updated. THe drive has also been through a BSY fix as it was initially invisible.

I´d like to know if this is a surface problem or board problem because if it is a board problem I will change the board and chip.

Thank for any help.

https://skydrive.live.com/redir?resid=A9FAEAB119AA3070!270&authkey=!AP_XCUnDrEN83Do

 

[Hawkeye22]

I can't be 100% certain, but the symptoms sound like the read/write head is stuck - the motor is trying to move the heads and it's just not happening.

 

[califauna]

How would that explain why the first few sectors of disk pass the scan every time though? Is it reading the section of the disc its stuck on then not moving, and thats what causes all the following red Xs?

 

[Hawkeye22]

Usually when a head is stuck, it's stuck. I guess it could have limited movement. Being able to read the SMART values might provide more insight.

 

[califauna]

Hawkeye22 - Heres a link to the SMART data for the drive.

https://skydrive.live.com/redir?resid=A9FAEAB119AA3070!121

 

[califauna]

Raw Read Error Rate 100 000000002409
Spin Up Time 95 000000000000
Start/Stop Count 100 000000000012
Reallocated Sector Count 63 000000000605
Seek Error Rate 100 00000000123F
Power On Hours Count 100 00000000000A
Spin Retry Count 100 000000000000
Power Cycle Count 100 000000000009
SATA Downshift Error Count 100 000000000000
End To End Error Count 100 000000000000
Reported Uncorrectable Errors 1 000000000D2E
Command Time Out 100 000000000000
High Fly Writes 100 000000000000
Hardware ECC Recovered 100 000000002409
Current Pending Sector 100 000000000028
Offline Uncorrectable Sector Count 100 000000000028
Ultra DMA CRC Error Rate 200 000000000000
Write head 100 BDDD0000001E
Total LBAs Written 100 0000000009B7
Total LBAs Read 100 00000000E44D

 

[Hawkeye22]

This is kind of hard to read. Did they list as OK or did they have an exclamation point next to them or say fail or anything? I can see 1 uncorrectable error and some reallocated sectors, but nothing else obvious. Take a look at current pending sectors and see if it shows ok.

 

[Hawkeye22]

You might want to try testdisk or some other disk analysis software too in order to see if you get similar results.

 

[califauna]

Hawkeye22, Thanks for the responses. I have tried test disk and SpinRite too. They couldnt access the drive.

 

[califauna]

In the link it shows an easier to read output. It basically says everything passed the test and the drive is healthy, but it has a lot of reallocated sectors (1514).

 

[Hawkeye22]

At this point the drive is probably useless. You didn't say the age of the drive, but all drives fail eventually. If there are reallocated sectors , it's time for a new drive. Even if a a new PCB could bring the drive back, the platters are bad/worn. Reallocated sectors tend to accumulate until you end up with pending sectors.

If you can't get the drive to be recognized in another computer, I'd say it's time for a new one.

 

[Dmitriy86]

This is a common problem with Seagates after a badsectors drive fails to read the rest of them so your drive doesn't have 99.9% bad sectors. If you dont have any important data on it just RMA.

 

[califauna]

Thanks for your above replies.

Its 3 years old.

Regarding saving the drive, Im only interested in salvaging what still works, so if its the heads etc that are bad, ill keep the PCb and chuck the rest, and vica-a-versa if its the reverse.From what youre all saying here its the internals of the drive, not the board.

Thanks for the responses.

 

[ramdaskm]

I had the same kind of issue where the whole disk had sector read issues although the disk was being reported as healthy by crystal disk info. The problem was the disk had a password set during BIOS setup. I thought I had removed it but it was still around. The password is dependent on the laptop so unless you try to read the password protected disk on the same laptop, it will show these weird errors.

 

[MichaelAtkins]

I had the same kind of issue where the whole disk had sector read issues although the disk was being reported as healthy by crystal disk info. The problem was the disk had a password set during BIOS setup. I thought I had removed it but it was still around. The password is dependent on the laptop so unless you try to read the password protected disk on the same laptop, it will show these weird errors.

Bad sectors are always a terrible drive problem, which can cause data loss at the same time. Therefore, you may need to learn more information about it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_sector