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Bad parts of hard drive when windows 7 being installed

  • 30-07-2012 10:37PM
    #1
    ryanch09
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 380 ✭✭


    Currently reinstalling windows on a hard drive that i know has some damaged areas and its at 2% on expanding files and the hard drive is clicking.

    Will the installation keep trying to write to those bad areas or will it move onto the healthy part of the drive?


Comments

  • #2
    ryanch09
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 380 ✭✭ryanch09


    Nevermind, got it to install on undamaged partition


  • #3
    Capt'n Midnight
    Moderators, Recreation & Hobbies Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 96,078 Mod ✭✭✭✭Capt'n Midnight


    There are two types of hard drive.
    Those that will fail at sometime in the future ...

    Hard drives have spare sectors hidden from you. By the time it starts reporting bad sectors it means all the spares have been used up.

    Get hdtune and see what SMART reports.

    back up all data and remember the drive could fail at any time


  • #4
    ryanch09
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 380 ✭✭ryanch09


    SMART test says all ok, does that mean a mechanical issue? Did a disk check and it found 2000kb of bad sectors(i honestly expected more) a new hard drive isn't an option at the moment what with the cost(cheapest in PC World is around €75 :S). Have my data safely backed up just in case.


  • #5
    [Deleted User]
    Posts: 18,160 ✭✭✭✭ [Deleted User]


    ryanch09 wrote: »
    SMART test says all ok, does that mean a mechanical issue? Did a disk check and it found 2000kb of bad sectors(i honestly expected more) a new hard drive isn't an option at the moment what with the cost(cheapest in PC World is around €75 :S). Have my data safely backed up just in case.

    I wouldn't touch a hard drive with 512 bytes of bad sectors, let alone two megabytes. At that point I'd consider the disk a liability and dump it.


  • #6
    Capt'n Midnight
    Moderators, Recreation & Hobbies Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 96,078 Mod ✭✭✭✭Capt'n Midnight


    Karsini wrote: »
    I wouldn't touch a hard drive with 512 bytes of bad sectors, let alone two megabytes. At that point I'd consider the disk a liability and dump it.
    2MB of software marked bad sectors could have been marked by the OS in it's file system without there being any real bad sectors. Even if they were bad sectors the drive may have remapped them so they would be good sectors now.

    There was an option in scandisk to recheck bad sectors to 'recover' them, but I'd rather the opposite option of marking remapped sectors as bad - simply because the head has to seek them out. You might gain a fraction of a % of drive space but at the expense of speed and seeking - which means more work for the drive which won't help it live longer.

    Smart info is a better guide than the OS ( unless it uses smart info / some smarts )

    Any all the above is moot.

    If the drive is clicking it's probably a dead man walking.


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  • #7
    [Deleted User]
    Posts: 18,160 ✭✭✭✭ [Deleted User]


    Capt'n Midnight wrote: »
    2MB of software marked bad sectors could have been marked by the OS in it's file system without there being any real bad sectors. Even if they were bad sectors the drive may have remapped them so they would be good sectors now.

    There was an option in scandisk to recheck bad sectors to 'recover' them, but I'd rather the opposite option of marking remapped sectors as bad - simply because the head has to seek them out. You might gain a fraction of a % of drive space but at the expense of speed and seeking - which means more work for the drive which won't help it live longer.

    Smart info is a better guide than the OS ( unless it uses smart info / some smarts )

    Any all the above is moot.

    If the drive is clicking it's probably a dead man walking.
    There is a /b switch in chkdsk for Windows 7 which clears the bad clusters file and retests. Generally I do look at the Current Pending Sector Count in the SMART data but usually if I've seen bad sectors in the OS, they've been there too.


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