Having bad sectors, I really need the drive, what to do?

[miggtt699]

Hello there, I've been having some problems with my Maxtor Diamond max 22 STM3500320AS, It has got some bad sectors on it.

I know the danger of losing data, but I really use it as a gaming PC so, I don't need to be worried as all my games can be downloaded through steam.

The problem is that this harddrive is really good, and I can't afford to replace it at this point. And windows crashes on it, gives me the NTOSKRNL.DLL Blue screen, I've done the "HDD REGENERATOR" on it, worked, 2 days later, crashes again...

I really can't replace this drive. I've heard about partitioning the bad sectors, but I don't know how to, and what software to use!

Please help me.

-Thanks in advance.

 

[rgd1101]

Run chkdsk to mark the bad sector.
Sound like it is a hardware issue. It just going get worse in the long run.

 

[mcopinger]

someone else chim in if I'm wrong, I'm not 100% sure how bad sectors work I know what I would try in this situation...

if your hard drive is failing and your games aren't backed up on something like steam or origin then you really should go buy a new hard drive and cloning software. I've had really good luck with apicorn (sp?). newegg.com sells one of their kits for $30 and you can get a 1TB 7200rpm seagate drive for $70. that's $100 to save all your games, which I'm sure cost you more then that. not sure what your situation is but I'd suggest you try and come up with a way to get some cash >.>

cheers buddy

 

[bucknutty]

in windows go to my computer right click on the HDD.
Go to properties, hit tools, Hit check now.
put a check in Automatically fix
and a check in scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors.
It will prompt you to reboot.
Let it run for like 5-8 hours. You should be good to go.

Keep in mind that a computer may run for week or years with bad sectors. You never know when a bad sector will develop on a spot with a key windwos file that may prevent the computer from booting.

 

[darkbooton]

True that! chkdsk to (hopefully) to give you a bit of time, but you need to be backing up/cloning now! Looking at Hard Drives on NewEgg for you and stumbled upon Western Digital WD VelociRaptor WD3000HLHX 300GB 10000 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive for $70.00. (Im buying two) Looked at the other prices, about the same price range for a 7200RP 500GB drive.

Your going to be replacing that drive soon, no way around it.

 

[daswilhelm]

you say the hard drive is really good, but it has bad sectors. that mean its actually really bad, and needs to be replaced. backup your data immediately and replace it.

 

[ram1009]

You're beating a dead horse. The HDD is not "really good". It's really bad and you can't afford NOT to replace it.

 

[migrax]

What's worse, is you are going to have sectors go bad on you over time and your data situation is going to get worse. You can run chkdsk /f (or is it /X) and it may fix the sectors, but if this is the case then I have a bit more bad news for you... your HD may be fine and it is you HD controller that is failing on you. What I would do is get a new HD and put it in alongside the failing drive and see if any bad sectors develop on the new drive, if so you may need a new motherboard or a PCI drive controller. If not, you can continue to use the failing drive as a storage drive and just keep running chkdsk periodically to see if it is deteriorating or not.


migrax

 

[miggtt699]

I will do the chkdsk and I'll leave a feedback. Thanks!

If I really can't run windows on this drive, maybe my WD Raptor 360 (old drive) can back me up for a while, and I'll still store all my games on that 500Gb, It won't be that critical then.

But eather way, I'm going to try and keep this drive alive! xD

Thanks

 

[daswilhelm]

just gonna get worse over time, replace it before hard drive prices go up again.

 

[miggtt699]

just gonna get worse over time, replace it before hard drive prices go up again.

I'm gonna see what I can do, but for now my Raptor is holding it, actualy very impressed with the boot times with this old drive.