How serious are disk errors in HD Tune?

Kobrakai · 15 Oct 2007 at 16:15

Just ran HD Tune hard disk error scan and got one red block on a 4 month old WD 500GB. Is this a common and expected result? or is this like Memtest where even one error means the drive is going to die on me? All values under the "health" tab have status OK. I only get the error on a full scan.

snowdog · 15 Oct 2007 at 16:25

Is that a surface scan or just a filesystem scan?
If it's a filesystem scan it's no prob might just be the odd file not written ok or damaged when shutting down while it was busy or whatever.
If it's a surface scan, then it's bad, means it's a bad sector wich usually indicates the hdd has problems.

Kobrakai · 15 Oct 2007 at 16:32

snowdog said:
Is that a surface scan or just a filesystem scan?

Surface I think. Also I cant run the benchmark, it gets half way through then stops and says it had a read error every time.

If it is a bad sector is there anything I can do to fix it?

I have 400GB of data on the drive, is it likely to just die on me without warning?

PiKe · 15 Oct 2007 at 16:38

Run a chkdsk /f on it

Kobrakai · 15 Oct 2007 at 19:39

PiKe said:
Run a chkdsk /f on it

chkdsk fixed a couple of errors to do with free space being marked as allocated in the master file table bitmap and in the volume bitmap. Still have the problem though.

PiKe · 15 Oct 2007 at 20:42

Kobrakai said:
chkdsk fixed a couple of errors to do with free space being marked as allocated in the master file table bitmap and in the volume bitmap. Still have the problem though.

chkdsk /r

Kobrakai · 15 Oct 2007 at 22:57

PiKe said:
chkdsk /r

Tried it, fixed some problems apparently but I still can’t benchmark the drive without read errors etc.

ByteJuggler · 15 Oct 2007 at 23:25

Run the manufacturers diagnostics. I assume you've got a full backup of all your data as a precaution?

Kobrakai · 15 Oct 2007 at 23:32

ByteJuggler said:
I assume you've got a full backup of all your data as a precaution?

Unfortunately I don’t have anywhere to backup that amount of data.

basmic · 16 Oct 2007 at 00:10

If it were me, I'd start making plans for a backup - whether it's a cheap 500gb drive, or 120 odd DVDs.

As soon as you backup, run WD diagnostics from a boot disk, then RMA the drive if need be.

Dr Zoidberg · 17 Oct 2007 at 23:18

I had very similar problems with a drive earlier this year, HD Tune gave a couple red squares, it would not complete the benchmark, chkdsk fixed some errors but did not solve the problem,
Started to get read errors from the drive,
salvaged everything i could from it and ran the manufactures diagnostic software and it told me to RMA the drive.
I would recommend doing the same as soon as possible.

Kobrakai · 20 Oct 2007 at 18:01

I got a second drive of the same make/model/capacity and backed everything up. Did a full format in Windows on the older drive (which took nearly 3 hours!) and it now lets me benchmark it and HD Tune doesn’t show errors anymore. Shame I had to buy a new drive but I had nowhere else to put the data short of using 100+ DVD’s. Oh well I have a backup drive now I guess.