Bad Sector on laptop HD, is it almost dead?

MikeHunt79 · 4 Oct 2009 at 23:58

I ran a full test with HDtune, and one of the blocks shows up as a red block.

Does this mean the HD is on it's way out?

bledd · 5 Oct 2009 at 09:48

if it was mine, I'd RMA / throw away the drive and buy a western digital blue drive to replace it.

hard drive problems are the most annoying pc problem imo.

MikeHunt79 · 5 Oct 2009 at 10:50

bledd. said:
if it was mine, I'd RMA / throw away the drive and buy a western digital blue drive to replace it.

hard drive problems are the most annoying pc problem imo.

Cheers, I think I'll do just that. Do you know if the 320gb WD blue drive is single platter? I'm just about to click buy, but I really want a single platter drive as it's quieter and uses less power.

bledd · 5 Oct 2009 at 12:12

no idea

it is in the desktop model, don't know about laptop sorry

linktoinsanity · 5 Oct 2009 at 15:53

If it were only one sector I'd back it up by all means, but there are millions of sectors on hard drives. You should only really start to worry if/when more than one all start dying in quick succession...

niko · 5 Oct 2009 at 22:05

i would change it ,it could be fine or go tomorrow don't risk it

MikeHunt79 · 5 Oct 2009 at 23:01

I've taken the hard drive out and the laptop is still giving me problems, I think it may have been dropped so I'm tempted to write it off instead of spend money on new parts.

I'll back it up anyway, I'm not sure how many sectors are bad, I just remember there was a red block when doing a full scan with HDtune.

bledd · 6 Oct 2009 at 10:11

do a memtest

MikeHunt79 · 6 Oct 2009 at 11:21

Ok, Memtest86 is running right now, it's been running for an hour with no errors, but I think there is a problem with the screen cable...

The machine does not always turn on properly, it cold boots instead. When it does turn on, even if you move the screen a tiny amount the screen goes blank and the computer freezes.

I think it's more than just a dodgy screen cable, the PCB is probably cracked!

It's an old pentium M lappy, so not the end of the world.

bledd · 6 Oct 2009 at 12:05

I had an old via box (perfect for a low power file server) that just would not play ball the other day

tried ram/ide cables/hard drive/cd drive

spent about two hours messing around before nailing it in the trash :/

MikeHunt79 · 6 Oct 2009 at 13:12

I guess sometimes it's best to quit while you're ahead.

I've got many old socket A boards that worked perfectly a few years ago, but now they won't boot at all, turns out the caps have gone bad or were poor in the first place, and it would cost upwards of £50 to replace all the caps!