My WD Raptor has bad sectors, how do I react?

[Ozpa]

Hello everyone!

So I thought I would do a disk check..



Ok, I reboot and let it do all the work. First it fixed a couple of indexes and then started scanning the disk (the "4 out of 5" section). This first scan it fixed/replaced data in some dll file and once all the scans were done there was "12KB in bad sectors" in the summary. I freaked out lol, never had my drives get bad sectors before.

Now windows booted and repeated the exact the same scan again. This time it didn't fix anything, but now in the summary it said "36KB in bad sectors"
Ok, I repeat the scan for the 6rd time and the results were the same as the time before.

Should I be panicking? My Raptor is one of the old generation ones 74GB and the warranty is long gone now. I will be selling this drive in a couple of days and I need to know if this is something that will kill the drive soon or it might just stay with that 36KB bad sectors without bothering the user

[95Viper]

Sounds like it may be dying, but I have scanned and repaired a drive before with bad sectors and she is still functional... but, do I trust her, not really.

Try the WD Customer Loyalty Program and see what you can get from them.

Partial quote from the web page:

Spoiler

*The customer's current drive must have a valid serial number that can be verified in our system.
*Both out-of-warranty and in-warranty drives are eligible for upgrade to a larger capacity product at a discounted price.
*An internal hard drive can only be upgraded to another internal hard drive. An external product can only be upgraded to another external product.
*The customer does not need to return his or her current drive to Western Digital.

[Kreij]

First of all, 36KB of bad sectors is almost nothing.
Bad sector growth is common as drives age, and when you notice it happening you should be making sure your backups are good in the event it starts to get worse.

Given that the Raptor is old, bad sector growth will probably get worse over time, but it could still be no problem for years.

I wouldn't "freak".

[qubit]

kreij might be right, but I wouldn't take my chances with it. It's a headache to lose your data, even if you have backups. That drive is definitely slowly dying, so it's not worth it in my book. Get a new one.

It might be a Raptor with awesome performance for its time, but it's dated tech now and most cheap, high capacity drives outperform it. A 2TB WD Green drive for example, will blow it away on read/write speed and it's not even a "performance" drive. I know, because I've got these and they blow away my Raptor X 150GB. The Raptors have the edge on access times, but that doesn't make much difference in a desktop environement.

If you're gonna sell it, make sure that you tell your buyer about the faults. If not, you'll just get a bad rep and have them on your back about it. Telling them might kill the sale, but so be it. I wouldn't buy a drive like this.

[LAN_deRf_HA]

Not sure if they're still doing this but I think you can check to see your drive can be used for trade in with their warranty checker (doesn't have to be in warranty).

[95Viper]

Originally Posted by LAN_deRf_HA

Not sure if they're still doing this but I think you can check to see your drive can be used for trade in with their warranty checker (doesn't have to be in warranty).

Do you read the threads?
And, it is called... WD Customer Loyalty Program
I have already posted that> Post #2

[LAN_deRf_HA]

Pfffft. Read posts other than my own? You crazy

[AsRock]

I have 2 Seagates and just after there warranty's had block blocks to and still today they run perfectly fine And these are 15GB and 30GB drives so that tells you the age of them. And they are both still used to day in a old P4 system.

How ever backing up is the 1st thing to do as the whole drive might be going down like some have already said and make sure you keep it's temps as low as possible to make sure it's not a heat issue.

Selling it you will have to make it clear to the buyer and i am sure it be a price killer and might be better of just keeping it and using it in a old system.

[Ozpa]

I have an update on this disk. Well yesterday I did a "clean all" (I replaced this OS disk with a C300 woot), of course, then had to re-do the disk alignment (MBR), active it, partition etc etc. Well in the end when it's clean and usable again I did "chkdsk D: /f /r". To my surprise it didn't report any black blocks or errors and the usable space is the same as before the clean.



Is it possible the cleanall healed it? I posted a selling ad for this disk saying it had bad sectors, so do I go back and correct it to say something like "doesn't have bad sectors anymore lol"? What's the explanation for this?

[Widjaja]

Oh thats interesting.
Have you ran your HDD through HDTune Error scan?
If not do it and see if all the squares come out green.
You may also want to run your drive through WD Diagnostics tool but I do not know if the tool supports your Raptor.

[Ozpa]

Ok started the checking, can you tell me if the settings are correct? (didn't change a thing after installing it)

[Widjaja]

If you get all green squares then you can say it doesn't have any bad sectors and you have proof to back it up.

[Widjaja]

Just keep it running till it has completed.
Nothing needs to be changed.

The free version of HDTune would have been fine too.

You can also look at the health state of your drive.
If any of the data has a yellow high light and says OK don't worry about it.
I have come across drives which have this even though they are brand new and working flawlessly.
And are still working flawlessly years later.

[qubit]

Originally Posted by Ozpa

I have an update on this disk. Well yesterday I did a "clean all" (I replaced this OS disk with a C300 woot), of course, then had to re-do the disk alignment (MBR), active it, partition etc etc. Well in the end when it's clean and usable again I did "chkdsk D: /f /r". To my surprise it didn't report any black blocks or errors and the usable space is the same as before the clean.

http://img38.imageshack.us/img38/730/unled2bai.png

Is it possible the cleanall healed it? I posted a selling ad for this disk saying it had bad sectors, so do I go back and correct it to say something like "doesn't have bad sectors anymore lol"? What's the explanation for this?

What's a C300? Are you using a different hard drive?

[Ozpa]

It got stuck for a bit at around 90% of the scan so I decided to change the the scanning unit from gB to % (from 0 to 100%) and it finished.



Does this pretty much prove the drive is healthy?
And this is what I have in the HEALTH tab.

[Widjaja]

From another forum:-

Cyclic redundancy check (CRC) is a method of verifying and correcting data after it is sent. What this warning is telling you is that at one point, data being sent/received by the drive failed this check. The most common cause for this is a faulty cable. Noise or resistence caused a bit to be flipped.

But it could be the onboard HDD controller as well.

Since this has already been logged in your HDD it can not be removed.

The sector scan usually does take a lot longer when nearing the end.

Next thing to do if yuor HDD supports it is run it through the two tests in WD Diagnostics Tool.

[Ozpa]

If hope this is it:

http://support.wdc.com/product/downl...&sid=3&lang=en

[Widjaja]

Originally Posted by Ozpa

If hope this is it:

http://support.wdc.com/product/downl...&sid=3&lang=en

Yes that's the utility so it does support old Raptors as well.
Well time to see what it says.

It's a good sign that HDTune shows no bad sectors though.
I expected to see bad sectors within the first few rows.

[95Viper]

Originally Posted by qubit

What's a C300? Are you using a different hard drive?

v(This)v is a C300... I am guessing and, again, I'm guessing he replaced the WD Raptor with it as his OS drive and is trying to prove there is nothing wrong with the Raptor to sell it as clean.

Crucial RealSSD C300

[Ozpa]

Weird test, only says the disk passed it.



So the disk is healthy then? :>

[Widjaja]

Yes it's good.
You have proof from WD Dianostics Tool saying the SMART status where the warning in HDTune comes from is a pass.

And HDTune shows the sectors are good.

As I have mentioned before I have come across HDDs with have had some thngs turn up yellow in HDTune and have always been that way.
Yet the HDDs have continued to run perfectly for years.

[Ozpa]

Thank you for all your help Widjaja!