2 HD, 1 with bad sectors. safe?

[Guest]

Howdy

I built a new system and I've got two hard drives: a deskstar 60gxp 60gig, and a 13 gig Fujitsu that I recycled from my old box.

My 13 gigger has had 8k bad sectors for quite some time now. After about half a year after their emergence, the drive has not developed any additional bad sectors.

I guess the first question would be whether or not I can expect this drive to go to *bleep* anytime soon. It seems to be a bit different than another drive I used to have--a 13 gig Western Digital that kept grinding itself up by the minute.

I figure put the 13 gig (ata66) on a separate controller and use it for general stupid stuff..swap, temp files, whatever--I haven't decided yet, and have 99% of the rest of my data on my deskstar. If I'm suddenly put in a forced format situation, I can use the stupid drive to back some stuff up, instead of running to a friend's house.

Would it be safe to put this drive, which undeniably has physical damage (even though it has not worsened for a long time), into my new box? Would this pose a risk to any other components in my computer?

When we're talking about 60 gigs of storage, it's certainly not worth jeopardizing anything for an extra 13, but if the only thing that can suffer more damage is the bad hard drive, then I guess I'm for it...

Down with bloatware!
Proud user of <b>ICQ98A</b>

 

[camieabz]

I'd either use it for non-essentials (games etc.) or I'd keep it as a back-up drive. The odds of both these drives going at the same time are low, and the 13GB will probably go first.

<b>
If the best things in life are free, why do I keep upgrading my system?
</b>

 

[Guest]

The disk probably just has some surface areas on the media that are bad since it hasn't worsened over time and only a small amount at that. It won't hurt any information on the IBM drive, but I'd be reluctant to install programs or data that wasn't backed up some where. It's a good drive as you said maybe for a swap file, downloads that you want quick access to that are backed up, etc since there's a good chance it won't develop anymore problems.

***check the jumpers 1st then check em again***

 

[Guest]

Thanks to the both of you for your replies. One more question, if I may:

I'd be reluctant to install programs or data that wasn't backed up some where

I'm probably being my old self and reading wrong/missing something, but do you mean you would be reluctant to install programs/store data on the IBM drive without it being backed up, due to the fact that I have a peice of damaged hardware, or did you mean that it would be pretty stupid to install/store something on the 13gig without having it backed up somewhere? I'm thinking you mean the latter, but just checking =)

I just want to use the 13gig as a crap drive, so long as I don't have to worry about motherboards going ablaze, etc (well not to that extreme)...

But for argument's sake, let's say that the cause of the bad sectors is not some random platter-crapout event, and that it's something...(?)..else. Maybe something like a bad logic board causing the bad sectors or (whatever). If the cause lies in something like that, could it contribute to the demise of some other part of my comp, ie the mobo or something? Forgive me--I'm getting into one of my paranoia stages, since I had such a horriffic experience with 2/3 of my last computer's hardware <P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by Smlhrs on 08/04/01 08:58 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[Lars_Coleman]

I have an idea. Try formatting the drive with the /u and see if it takes care of the bad sector. It may just be data corruption and that could get rid of it entirely. If it's a physically bad spot on the hard drive platters I highly doubt it, just because there is a space at the end of the hard drive that the drive stores bad sectors. Believe it or not the hard drive had bad sectors when you first purchased it and it had a thing called a microcontroller that finds them and allocats part of the space reserved for them for the one's it finds.

At an A: prompt booting from a startup disk type the following :::
Fdisk X:/U < X being the drive letter you want to format>

Hope that helps ...

<font color=red>"Can you deal with that!"</font color=red>

 

[Guest]

>>But for argument's sake, let's say that the cause of the bad sectors is not some random platter-crapout event, and that it's something...(?)..else. Maybe something like a bad logic board causing the bad sectors or (whatever). If the cause lies in something like that, could it contribute to the demise of some other part of my comp, ie the mobo or something? Forgive me--I'm getting into one of my paranoia stages, since I had such a horriffic experience with 2/3 of my last computer's hardware<<

I meant the latter. I figured that was what you are worried about. Really except for the data that's saved to the drive it can do no harm. Because there is a chance that something else is wrong besides the surface area, is why I would be reluctant to install programs or unsaved data. But I certainly wouldn't worry about it damaging the rest of my system.

***check the jumpers 1st then check em again***

 

[Guest]

Ok guys, thanks a bunch =)

Down with bloatware!
Proud user of <b>ICQ98A</b>