Dealing with Hard Drive Failure: Causes, Fixes, and Next Steps

[mech-eng]

What is the situation for my hard drive now? Can I fix it with a software? Should I change it? The PC is working with no problem? What should I do now? Should I change the hard drive in the service? S.M.A.R.T status is bad. There was nothing a few days ago. I cannot understand how this has happened

Thank you.

 

[Vanadium 50]

. There was nothing a few days ago.

By that logic nothing is ever broken.

Do you not believe the diagnostic when it says the drive is bad?

 

[jedishrfu]

Make a backup if you can of whatever you can meaning backup your files first not the whole disk.

Drives are mechanical so there's room for motor failure, actuator arm failure, flying head failures which can scratch the disk, plate warpage from heat ...

http://www.adrc.com/hard_disk_failures.html

 

[mech-eng]

By that logic nothing is ever broken.

Do you not believe the diagnostic when it says the drive is bad?

I still do not understand what is the problem. What is broken? Do you mean by diagnostic that program I have pasted here the pic of it? If so, yes I believe the program but I have checked the hard drive with that program a few days ago. There was nothing wrong. I mean this.

Thank you.

 

[Vanadium 50]

If you trust the program, and the program says the drive is bad, what is your question?

 

[jedishrfu]

Have you made a backup yet?

Drive failures come as simple warnings and escalate exponentially from there until its just too late.

 

[mech-eng]

Have you made a backup yet?

Drive failures come as simple warnings and escalate exponentially from there until its just too late.

No I haven't made a back up because there is no important information in that hard drive. But I pluged and SD card in that PC. There is important information in it are they in danger? Can this situation affect that SD card?

Thank you.

 

[mech-eng]

If you trust the program, and the program says the drive is bad, what is your question?

I am not technically minded. I can see there is problem but I do not know what it is precisely. And as I referred to in #1 how can I fix it? Is there any software solution for this problem? Is that hard drive going to go into dustbin? What should I do at this stage? Its warranty is out of date now, can the service still plug a new hard drive? Instead of a hard drive, can I say them to plug a SSD? Are these possible? Can laptop accept this hardware change or it might give errors because of if new hardware do not fit with the laptop.

Thank you.

 

[Vanadium 50]

It says "Status Bad". That means the drive is bad and needs to be replaced.

 

[NTL2009]

No I haven't made a back up because there is no important information in that hard drive. But I pluged and SD card in that PC. There is important information in it are they in danger? Can this situation affect that SD card?

Thank you.

Unlikely to affect the SD card. But if it has important data on it, it should be backed up.

 

[Routaran]

What is the situation for my hard drive now? Can I fix it with a software? Should I change it? The PC is working with no problem? What should I do now? Should I change the hard drive in the service? S.M.A.R.T status is bad. There was nothing a few days ago. I cannot understand how this has happened

View attachment 209131

Thank you.

Reallocated Sectors Count indicates the count of reallocated sectors. When a drive finds a read/write/verification error it marks the sector as "reallocated" and transfers data to another part of the drive. This is why, on a modern hard disks, you will not see bad blocks while testing the surface - all bad blocks are hidden in reallocated sectors. The more sectors that are reallocated, the worse your drive gets, you'll see your drive working slower and slower.

The way you read smart tests is that your current values need to be above the threshold.
In this case, your current is 1 and your threshold is 5. Your drive is dying and could fail any moment. Different drive vendors report the numbers differently so the raw/real values can mean anything. If you want to know wha that the actual count of reallocation events is, then you'll need to find the documentation for your specific drive and learn what the raw/real mean.

This can happen due to age, normal wear&tear, bad luck, or you my gave unfortunately received a potato that looks like a HDD instead of an actual HDD (a bad hard drive).

 

[rootone]

Can I fix it with a software?

That is extremely unlikely,
although there is software which attempts to figure out the status of physically failing sectors and relocate them.
What you really need to to do is backup anything important on that disk then replace the disk.
Before you then throw it in the trash though, you could do a full reformat on it.
If it's just a bad track or two, and not head failure, it may be good as a secondary storage for a year or two.
No, the problem cannot spread to other drives, it is a physical failure of some sort.

 

[mech-eng]

That is extremely unlikely,
although there is software which attempts to figure out the status of physically failing sectors and relocate them.
What you really need to to do is backup anything important on that disk then replace the disk.
Before you then throw it in the trash though, you could do a full reformat on it.
If it's just a bad track or two, and not head failure, it may be good as a secondary storage for a year or two.
No, the problem cannot spread to other drives, it is a physical failure of some sort.

Sorry, but I cannot understand some parts of the above. What is relocation of failing sectors?
Can reformat such a disk hide for, correct bad sectors?

Thank you.

 

[Vanadium 50]

You got the answer twice.

That means the drive is bad and needs to be replaced.

What you really need to to do is backup anything important on that disk then replace the disk.

The rest of rootone's advice is bad, since a format does not actually test the drive's sectors. A formatted bad drive is just that, a formatted bad drive.

 

[rootone]

That's true of regular formatting, but there is also low-level formatting which completely redefines the tracks and sectors and is the final part of the manufacturing of a disk.
There are several freeware products that can do this.
That won't however 'fix' areas of the disk that are physically damaged, it just marks them as unusable. so as far as the system is concerned those areas don't even exist.
It is fairly likely however that whatever caused the original failing could cause presently undamaged parts to go bad in future.

 

[OCR]

You got the answer twice.

I guess that can happen to anyone... twice in a while ?

 

[Routaran]

That is extremely unlikely,
although there is software which attempts to figure out the status of physically failing sectors and relocate them.
What you really need to to do is backup anything important on that disk then replace the disk.
Before you then throw it in the trash though, you could do a full reformat on it.
If it's just a bad track or two, and not head failure, it may be good as a secondary storage for a year or two.
No, the problem cannot spread to other drives, it is a physical failure of some sort.

I wouldn't recommend continuing to use this drive. The S.M.A.R.T. tests indicate that the drive is already passed the manufacturer's recommended threshold for reallocated sectors. Too much of the drive is already bad.

Low usage could very well see the drive last a while but assuming the test results are accurate, I don't believe it's worth the risk of putting the OP's data in danger. HDDs are pretty cheap now, IMO, this drive should be wiped & disposed.

That's true of regular formatting, but there is also low-level formatting which completely redefines the tracks and sectors and is the final part of the manufacturing of a disk.
There are several freeware products that can do this.

Off topic but, correct me if I'm wrong. I do not believe this is possible any more with modern hard drives. physical sector sizes are marked during the manufacturing process and cannot be changed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disk_formatting#Transition_away_from_LLF
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Servowriter

Are you talking about logical sector size/cluster size?
If not, can you please point me to one of these programs? I'd be very curious to see what they do.

 

[Vanadium 50]

That's true of regular formatting, but there is also low-level formatting which completely redefines the tracks and sectors and is the final part of the manufacturing of a disk.

Which would be helpful if the OP lived in or next to a disk factory.

Given that the OP is struggling with a SMART report, it doesn't make sense to point him at expert tools, especially since you need a chain of tools running in the right order (surface scan, then format), with no guarantee of success and indeed, a high probability of failure. At best he will have a lower capacity drive that is likely to fail hard at any moment. The drive is bad and should be replaced.

 

[NTL2009]

I can't help but think about a conversation I've had a few times with a few people -

Me: "Do you have a backup?"
Them: "Yes. It is run every night."

Me: "Have you ever tried to recover anything from your backup?"
Them: "No. I've never had to."

Me: "You do not have a backup"
Them: "?"​

I would occasionally test any new IT guy at MegaCorp (after copying the file to a flash drive) - "Hey IT guy, I just accidentally deleted a file I need for a presentation to our VP later today, can you recover it?" Sometimes I would have it in 15 minutes, and they would get a lot of praise from me and I would let their boss know what a great job they were doing. Other times, I would get this line about how they need to run the recovery program, but first, they need to update the recovery program to the latest version, but wait, that's not compatible with the old version, and on and on. "But we have you backed up."

Me: "You do not have a backup"