Hard drive problems

[flipperbear404]

I have a seagate 1tb hard drive thats been going really slow like programes freezing and just plain slow even after a full reformat so i downloaded 2 programes.

Acronis Drive Monitor tells me that my harddrive is only 30% healthy it says
Read Error Reallocated Sectors Count,57,99,36,Fail.

HD Tune Pro Says warning that i have damaged sectors rest the same thing that Acronis Drive Monitor.

So i tried to get an rma to ship my hard drive back but they sayed that if i dont fail the smart test on seatools for windows i cant send it back witch it says that my hard drive passed every time so he told me to try and zero fill the hard drive witch i need to wait on for my cd drive but since im stuck with this hard drive till it just completely craps out is there any other way to fix it for now?

Computer specs

Operating System
Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit SP1
CPU
Intel Core i5 3570K @ 3.40GHz
Ivy Bridge 22nm Technology
RAM
8.00 GB Single-Channel DDR3 @ 798MHz
Motherboard
MSI H77MA-G43 (MS-7756)
Graphics
ASUS VS247 (1920x1080@60Hz)
2047MB GeForce GTX 550 Ti (EVGA)
Hard Drives
932GB ATA ST31000528AS SCSI Disk Device (SATA)

 

[RealBeast]

Have you run chkdsk on the drive?

With all that other nice gear you don't have an SSD for your OS and programs?

 

[flipperbear404]

ive ran chkdsk several times the latest one was on the 23rd it never says i have bad sectors but it always cleans up unused index stuff everytime

Checking file system on C:
The type of the file system is NTFS.


A disk check has been scheduled.
Windows will now check the disk.

CHKDSK is verifying files (stage 1 of 3)...
363520 file records processed. File verification completed.
2224 large file records processed. 0 bad file records processed. 2 EA records processed. 60 reparse records processed. CHKDSK is verifying indexes (stage 2 of 3)...
435628 index entries processed. Index verification completed.
0 unindexed files scanned. 0 unindexed files recovered. CHKDSK is verifying security descriptors (stage 3 of 3)...
363520 file SDs/SIDs processed. Cleaning up 25 unused index entries from index $SII of file 0x9.
Cleaning up 25 unused index entries from index $SDH of file 0x9.
Cleaning up 25 unused security descriptors.
Security descriptor verification completed.
36055 data files processed. CHKDSK is verifying Usn Journal...
171860968 USN bytes processed. Usn Journal verification completed.
Windows has checked the file system and found no problems.

976752639 KB total disk space.
685634676 KB in 166645 files.
114620 KB in 36056 indexes.
0 KB in bad sectors.
631819 KB in use by the system.
65536 KB occupied by the log file.
290371524 KB available on disk.

4096 bytes in each allocation unit.
244188159 total allocation units on disk.
72592881 allocation units available on disk.

Internal Info:
00 8c 05 00 d7 17 03 00 58 d8 05 00 00 00 00 00 ........X.......
a9 01 00 00 3c 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ....<...........
00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................

Windows has finished checking your disk.
Please wait while your computer restarts.


This is my gaming/movie computer so i install and uninstall alot of stuff and since i heard you have a limit on how much you can install and uninstall on ssd ive been staying away from them

 

[RealBeast]

. . . This is my gaming/movie computer so i install and uninstall alot of stuff and since i heard you have a limit on how much you can install and uninstall on ssd ive been staying away from them

Not if you get a Samsung 830 or Crucial M4. The problem with SandForce controller based models is that TRIM doesn't work on the latest firmware and to copy movies over and over eventually results in them slowing down.

Here is a good article on the TRIM issue at present (and it probably doesn't not affect the new Intel models since they have Intel firmware): http://www.anandtech.com/show/6107/corsair-force-series-gs-240gb-review

But you can write tons to drives, take a look at the data in this ongoing endurance test, some drives have written over 800Tb of data, which you wouldn't do in decades: http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?271063-SSD-Write-Endurance-25nm-Vs-34nm

As for your HDD, I would tend to believe chkdsk and the Seagate tool over the others. Look at other issues starting with running memtest86+ from here: www.memtest.org

 

[flipperbear404]

Thank you that was some great info and im able to buy the Samsung 830 from newegg but how do i use it because i have way more then 128gb do i just install my main programs on my ssd and the other programs on an external?

 

[RealBeast]

I would recommend a clean re-install of Windows 7 to the SSD (and set your motherboard SATA mode to AHCI just before the install) with the HDD detached. Then do all the Windows updates and driver installations for your graphics, LAN, chipset, etc. Then optimize your SSD, this is a good guide: http://thessdreview.com/ssd-guides/optimization-guides/the-ssd-optimization-guide-2/

Then install your key programs, documents, and games; but leave a good chunk empty for a folder that you will use to copy movies to and then delete, copy new ones, etc.

Everything else can be loaded on the HDD, preferably an internal -- I would try reformatting your problematic drive and using it just for lesser used programs and storage and see how it does. I think that you will find that your SSD if well optimized (I turn off hibernate, system restore, and put the paging file on a HDD instead of the SSD as it is rarely accessed for most uses and takes way too much space).

 

[flipperbear404]

Best answer selected by flipperbear404.