Hard drive just got 11 reallocated sectors

[Simfish]

So my computer is just over 1 year old. I put it on sleep a lot rather than shutting it down (but I don't think this hurts the hard drive). Is there any reason for worry? According to HD Sentinel, the percent health is 88%. According to "Failure Trends in a Large Disk Drive Population", my hard drive (14 months old) has a ~90% probability of making it through the next 8 months (after the first reallocation).

There is a concern though, after the 1st event, hard drives are 15 times more likely to fail in the next 60 days or so. I did get most of my items backed up but not all of them yet. But none of my two external HDs (one lacie, one western digital) have any SMART technology enabled on them so I can't check their progress at all.

Also, bad sectors are only discovered on bootup, right? What if you just left your PC on all the time? Would the computer suddenly crash upon coming across a bad sector or what?

 

[vincentm]

So my computer is just over 1 year old. I put it on sleep a lot rather than shutting it down (but I don't think this hurts the hard drive). Is there any reason for worry?

Not necessarily. It's more of a power save feature than anything else.

There is a concern though, after the 1st event, hard drives are 15 times more likely to fail in the next 60 days or so. I did get most of my items backed up but not all of them yet. But none of my two external HDs (one lacie, one western digital) have any SMART technology enabled on them so I can't check their progress at all.

Also, bad sectors are only discovered on bootup, right? What if you just left your PC on all the time? Would the computer suddenly crash upon coming across a bad sector or what?

Bad sectors can be discovered in POST, if you have SMART enabled in BIOS. Usually after 1 bad sector it won't be long until that spreads to affect other sectors on the platters. Most times it's a run away effect. Backup your data and start shopping for a replacement.

I always recommend having a 2nd storage drive connected to your machine whether internally or externally. Usually heat can lead to a head crash on a HDD, or cause the platters to become slightly warped. How's the airflow on your system?

 

[g33kski11z]

spinrite is a nice program that helps repair bad sectors...

 

[stewartcs]

Also, bad sectors are only discovered on bootup, right? What if you just left your PC on all the time? Would the computer suddenly crash upon coming across a bad sector or what?

If your OS tries to write something important to the bad sector, or if it has already written something there that it needs, it will definitely crash. Happened to me not that long ago. The computer will 'freeze up' and then you get the blue screen of death upon rebooting.

Back your data up regularly!

CS

 

[Levtechllc]

Fixing all bad sectors

When I worked for roaminggear.,com, that one discount computer site we basically see that all the time. You just have to boot into a new command prompt windows in the laptop or whatever your working with. Thats CMD in the RUN menu. Type chkdsk /r and then type y for running on bootup. It takes a while so make sure you can live without it for a while. If its really bad than you never know.
levtechllc, used, new buy its all a matter of what's best for you. Check out deals somewhere and see.