Bad sectors

spleenharvester · 10 May 2011 at 20:59

How bad are bad sectors, as far as real-world use goes?

I have a WDC WD1600AAJS here that has a few, I only found out on a random test and was using the drive fine for years, 'xcept now I need to use it on a new build since the HDD I had was IDE and there wasn't enough connectors, would it be alright for just a family computer that's used mainly for teh internetz?

Cheers

DIABLO · 10 May 2011 at 22:00

A few bad sectors are fine but if you have a lot it's a sign that the drive is dying.

oliver2601 · 10 May 2011 at 22:57

If you have a bad sector you won't be able to write to it... so it's just like losing a couple of GB (or so I think).

If there are a lot or you start hearing louder than normal noises coming from it then backup everything and buy a new drive. (You can pick up hard drives for dirt cheap now)

spleenharvester · 10 May 2011 at 23:23

Ah 'sall good now, tried to zero sector it like 5 times and eventually it worked

amazed smart all checks out tbf, found it in an old case that'd obviously taken a battering out in the garage, didn't expect it to.