# bad blocks found. on 120 GB hdd what now? (RIP)

## kernelOfTruth

Hi ladies & gentlemen,

a badblocks check on my old external rescue hdd with 120 gb (last resort hdd   :Rolling Eyes:  ) revealed that it has 82 bad blocks,

I'm currently running a second test pass,

is it safe to use it, if on the second pass no errors occur ? will they occur again ?

many thanks in advance   :Smile: 

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## eccerr0r

All depends on whether you like playing Russian roulette.

You could get lucky and the disk would last another 10 years with those bad blocks mapped away...

you could get unlucky and lose everything on the disk...

I have this 700MB 2.5" disk that still seems to work fine after years of operation, even with bad sectors on it...  Just needed to avoid them.

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## kernelOfTruth

thanks, eccerr0r,

I think I'll risk it: 

let's make some prayers to the gods of data safety   :Wink: 

it's an ntfs-formatted hdd (windows image, drivers, etc) anyway so nothing really of importance   :Laughing: 

 *Quote:*   

> I have this 700MB 2.5" disk that still seems to work fine after years of operation, even with bad sectors on it... Just needed to avoid them.

 

 :Shocked: 

that must be from around 199-something ?

might I ask which manufacturer it is from ?

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## padoor

use testdisk program and confirm the errors.

if the hdd you are going to format do with xp cd and scandisk the whole drive.

partition away the bad blocks and use the good partitions only.

out of 120gb you must abe able to get 100gb of useful space probably in number of partitions.

good luck  :Smile: 

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## kernelOfTruth

 *padoor wrote:*   

> use testdisk program and confirm the errors.
> 
> if the hdd you are going to format do with xp cd and scandisk the whole drive.
> 
> partition away the bad blocks and use the good partitions only.
> ...

 

thanks, padoor   :Smile: 

it's currently not looking good:

 *Quote:*   

> 974120
> 
> 1416997
> 
> 1836837
> ...

   :Sad: 

(output from badblocks log, still testing ...)

after that I'll follow padoor's advice,

I, however, have the feeling that dumping it would be a better idea, is that correct ?

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## kernelOfTruth

 *Quote:*   

> Pass completed, 82 bad blocks found.
> 
> Checking for bad blocks in read-write mode
> 
> From block 0 to 120627360
> ...

 

RIP

Hitachi Deathstar   :Laughing: 

(that's my 4th hitachi of 4 dying since approx. 1998   :Rolling Eyes:  )

O.K. topic finished

thanks guys

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## Simba7

Ugh.. Another "Deathstar".. I had 4 of these die unexpectedly on me.. Good thing there wasn't anything important on them..

Had a 15GB, a 20GB, and a 40GB die on me.. Suddenly, and without warning.. Don't EVER trust these drives.

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## kernelOfTruth

 *Simba7 wrote:*   

> Ugh.. Another "Deathstar".. I had 4 of these die unexpectedly on me.. Good thing there wasn't anything important on them..
> 
> Had a 15GB, a 20GB, and a 40GB die on me.. Suddenly, and without warning.. Don't EVER trust these drives.

 

it was not really a "Deathstar" but it's name was Deskstar so ...   :Laughing: 

(I had one of those, too, btw)

... I'm done with hitachi - sorry guys, no more ca$$ from me   :Rolling Eyes: 

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## Simba7

Deskstar = Deathstar.. Lot of IT guys call them Deathstars due to their failure rate and sudden deaths.

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## kernelOfTruth

 *Simba7 wrote:*   

> Deskstar = Deathstar.. Lot of IT guys call them Deathstars due to their failure rate and sudden deaths.

 

ah, thanks, another thing learned   :Idea: 

another question:

how often should I run badblocks on external portable harddisks ? or even on internal harddrives ?

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## Simba7

Should never need to, especially with IDE drives. They automatically reallocate good blocks from a "pool" if it encounters a bad block.

The time you have to worry is when there is no longer good blocks in the pool and it starts spitting out errors. After that time, I would highly suggest you back everything up or transfer to a different hard drive.

Now, if you find a drive that has bad blocks in a region of the drive, you might be able to cut out the bad section, but I'm unsure on how to do this properly.

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## eccerr0r

The 700MB 2.5" HDD was an ancient Toshiba HDD.  I don't even think it had sector sparing.  There's currently a msdos FS on it (win95) and msdos fs actually has bad block support...

Sometimes it's not clear whether bad blocks are due to grown surface defects or due to mechanism failure...but looking at the explosive growth of bad sectors, it's probably the latter.

Hmm...honestly I've had more maxtor disks fail, but recently I've had a significant drop in failures for whatever reason.  The only current disk that's dying on me is a new-in-2001 60GB WD disk.  Slowly developing more bad sectors though it's still working, barely... 

Luckily it's a workstation OS disk, no real data storage on it... but it does have my only x86_64 Gentoo install on it  :Sad: 

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## padoor

it can be head alignment gone out of precision 

the head support worn off

anyways before giving up try wiping the entire drive and dos format

free boot and wipe programs are available . i dont remember the name now.

try to salvage as much space as possible.

there is a toshiba laptop utility to check and change drive size .try in toshiba support site.

it might serve you some more time.  :Smile: 

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