I just got through with a full zero filling (low level format) on my Seagate 80GB hard-drive and i'm not sure how long it will stay alive so here i make a poll to see anyone with the same experience with a bad sector hard-drive and how long does it live after doing a scandisk/low level format or reformat it to another or same file system...
How long does your bad sector HDD survive?
- Thread starter ltothev
- Start date
The JoJo
Wannabe Storage Freak
Nowadays, if a drive gets bad sectors, it's an immediate RMA for that drive when I'm dealing with them. IF the drive is recently new, let's say larger than 40GB.
No idea to wait for it to break totally. It usually happens at the worst possible moment.
No idea to wait for it to break totally. It usually happens at the worst possible moment.
Tannin
Storage? I am Storage!
There is no telling. Sometimes a single bad sector is a sign of fast-approaching disaster, sometimes the drive will gradually deteriorate over (say) six months, other times it will continue to give faithful service for years.
It's the old Clint Eastwood school of computing rule.
It's the old Clint Eastwood school of computing rule.
true but it happens so fast, i have a maxtor 40GB hard-drive which die after like 4 1/2 month of using and this one was from my sister computer, she never really uses her computer often so it's not on 24 hour a day and she only uses for web surfing and emailing and it just totally dead, won't even boot up at all, then there goes my seagate 80GB which brought brand new retail and after 5-6 months of using, it just keep on lagging and freezing so I did a hard-drive scandisk and there you go, 3 bad sector...
I meant, it made me kinda worry about getting a drive that is larger than 80GB becuase larger hard-drive seems to be more easily develope bad sector or get defeactive and from my experience, if your hard-drive has bad sector, it will take like a minute or up to 5 minute for it to move on to a another folder or clicks so it will take forever for you to backup that drive to get all your important data out like vidoes/music before reformating it or RMA it...
that's what really scare me, I lost all my videos and like 7GB of MP3's music becuase there is no way i can copy all that file to my other working hard-drive becuase that bad sector drive is just totally lag..
so after experiencing such a horrible day, i would try to stay away from those 160GB+ hard-drive becuase if those are defeactive/bad sector, it would takes like days to reformat it filling in zeros
and you will end up losing my data if that drive turn out to be bad so i would get an 80GB hard-drive, then get a pack of 50 Ridata DVD+RW disk which only cost around $40 bucks and that is like total up 4gb each disk times 50 is nearly 200GB worth of data from those 50 DVD+RW disk..
They are much more secure than those hard-drive and can also be rewritable...
I meant, it made me kinda worry about getting a drive that is larger than 80GB becuase larger hard-drive seems to be more easily develope bad sector or get defeactive and from my experience, if your hard-drive has bad sector, it will take like a minute or up to 5 minute for it to move on to a another folder or clicks so it will take forever for you to backup that drive to get all your important data out like vidoes/music before reformating it or RMA it...
that's what really scare me, I lost all my videos and like 7GB of MP3's music becuase there is no way i can copy all that file to my other working hard-drive becuase that bad sector drive is just totally lag..
so after experiencing such a horrible day, i would try to stay away from those 160GB+ hard-drive becuase if those are defeactive/bad sector, it would takes like days to reformat it filling in zeros
and you will end up losing my data if that drive turn out to be bad so i would get an 80GB hard-drive, then get a pack of 50 Ridata DVD+RW disk which only cost around $40 bucks and that is like total up 4gb each disk times 50 is nearly 200GB worth of data from those 50 DVD+RW disk.. They are much more secure than those hard-drive and can also be rewritable...
Tea
Storage? I am Storage!
I agree, ltothev. There are a million "I wish I'd done/not done that" situations, but one of the worst ones of all is "I wish I'd backed up my data yesterday".
We see quite a few drives with troubles like your Seagate has. Sometimes it helps to try to get the data off one step at a time: just be patient and don't try to copy the whole thing. If you can get this file and then that folder, little by little, you can often get quite a lot of the data off.
But if the drive goes into mega-slow mode everywhere you try to access it (i.e., not just on certain files but on all of them) then it's odds-on that you are screwed.
We see quite a few drives with troubles like your Seagate has. Sometimes it helps to try to get the data off one step at a time: just be patient and don't try to copy the whole thing. If you can get this file and then that folder, little by little, you can often get quite a lot of the data off.
But if the drive goes into mega-slow mode everywhere you try to access it (i.e., not just on certain files but on all of them) then it's odds-on that you are screwed.
Buck
Storage? I am Storage!
I say 1-2 months because I don't keep them around. No sense in gambling with my customer's data.
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
A bad sector is an immediate cause for 1. Backing up everything possible and 2. RMA.
No fooling around.
If a drive is out of warranty I might keep it for some utterly unimportant task like storage for DVD rips, but that's about it.
No fooling around.
If a drive is out of warranty I might keep it for some utterly unimportant task like storage for DVD rips, but that's about it.
blakerwry
Storage? I am Storage!
in my experience it's not uncommon for a drive to come with a few (< 100) bad sectors. As long as the number doesnt increase there's no cause for worry.
About once a month or 2 I check out smart data and verify the numbers havent gone up...
About once a month or 2 I check out smart data and verify the numbers havent gone up...
sechs
Storage? I am Storage!
I've never had a drive that developed bad sectors not, rather immediately, kick-over. I've also never had a drive fail outside of its warranty....
jtr1962
Storage? I am Storage!
Look at the reallocated sector count, although sometimes if the drive is writing data and loses power it will reallocate a sector when the sector is still good.ltothev said:
I think what most of the people here are talking about when they mean bad sectors are when the O/S marks a sector as bad. This doesn't happen until you run out of spares, and it's always a bad sign when it does. I don't pay too much attention to the reallocated sector count unless it's in the triple digits (actually, I never had that happen yet), or if it's increasing rapidly from day to day. I have one drive with ~20, another with one, and the rest of my drives either have none, or don't have SMART. I haven't had a drive fail on my yet. I think avoiding shock when you're integrating it into your system is the key here.
BTW, welcome to StorageForum! 8)
CougTek
Hairy Aussie
That made me smileThe JoJo said:
blakerwry
Storage? I am Storage!
as long as that value is nto increasing it is within specs... if you're worried then send the drive back for RMA.. just beware that the drive you get back may not be any more reliable than the drive you have.
IDE family (includes *ATAs) or SCSI family (includes FCAL)?
IDE drives have a reserved set of blocks, which the drive will use to automatically remap bad blocks as they're identified by the drive; by the time your OS can see any bad blocks, the drive has been degrading for quite some time. As many blocks as it needs to go through to use those up, the effective degrade rate is going to be fast enough that you will definitely see more problems, and soon. Due to the prevalence of ATA drives today, I voted on this basis.
SCSI drives, on the other hand, don't do this. The first bad block is detectable by the OS as soon as it goes bad. I have had a SCSI drive get four bad blocks on the first fsck, then not have another for over three years. I've also had a SCSI drive get one bad block per year; also not a big issue.
IDE drives have a reserved set of blocks, which the drive will use to automatically remap bad blocks as they're identified by the drive; by the time your OS can see any bad blocks, the drive has been degrading for quite some time. As many blocks as it needs to go through to use those up, the effective degrade rate is going to be fast enough that you will definitely see more problems, and soon. Due to the prevalence of ATA drives today, I voted on this basis.
SCSI drives, on the other hand, don't do this. The first bad block is detectable by the OS as soon as it goes bad. I have had a SCSI drive get four bad blocks on the first fsck, then not have another for over three years. I've also had a SCSI drive get one bad block per year; also not a big issue.
blakerwry
Storage? I am Storage!
I think it depends on the drive Grim. Not all ATA drives did this.. it's only been within the last 3 or 4 years that it has been standard. I think IBM's SCSI drives used this technology before their ATA drives, don't know about the other manufacturers though..