Are a few bad sectors on hd (now fixed by chkdsk) a sign of imminent hd failure?

Hi all, I just wanted to ask if having had a few bad sectors found and fixed by chkdsk on my new laptop hd is in anyway a sure sign of imminent hd failure??, should I be worried about this or should it be ok (assuming that the fix applied is ok)?? (bad sectors found in 4 files only)

Also would like to ask, if I made a disk image with these bad sectors would they be transferred to a new disk if I were to restore it to one or are the bad sectors purely physical on the actual device rather than to do with data or file structure???.

I know I can google it but while on this excellent site I thought I would ask here first, if thats ok.

Any advice much appreciated as this has been on my mind for a day or 2, thanks.

 

Are bad sectors an imminent sign of HD failure? Generally no, however some bad sectors can develop and increase at an alarming rate.

Are bad sectors a cause for concern? Absolutely

Even if you buy a brand new HD, it will have bad sectors on it which have been so marked so no data is written to them.

HD can either have logical or physical errors. If the error is logical then running the manufacturer's HD full diagnostics software will generally cure. Also running chkdsk /r from the recovery console will also correct. My preference if I have any bad sectors is to run chkdsk /r first and then always run the manufacturer's HD full diagnostics after.

You can as a good alternative use HDTune v2.55 (free) which can be run from within windows to check for disk errors and monitor. It's a great prog.

If you have logical ie bad sectors on a HD and image that partition the bad sectors will also be copied.

As has already been said in another one of your posts, having one great big partition which contains your o/s and all of your data is a poor set up. Partition the drive and create a Data partition for all your work that way if the o/s partition (primary and active) fails your data will be on a totally separate and still accessible partition. You can then use Syncback (free version) to synchronise your data with an external HD.

So 2 clear processes 1. image the primary active partition with o/s every couple of weeks or so to an external HD and 2. synchronise the data from the data partition on to the external at more regular intervals. Data sychronisation should include emails, etc which are store which the o/s.

You can use an incremental back up for the data but never use incremental back up for the images as you will be begging for problems imo.

Good Luck

 

points taken note of risk_reversal, the HDTune v2.55 (free) utility you mention is over 2 years old, is it ok for Win 7?

 

Never tried it on win7 but the HDTune site says that it is supported...

http://www.hdtune.com/download.html

As an aside you may think about creating a Virtual Machine on your pc. I use Virtual Box but there is also VMW. The purpose of which as an example could be to test software prior to full installation.

However, if you image regularly, you will nevertheless have a major asset in play.

Good Luck in you endeavors.

 

The thing that bugs me is that it is a new machine and shouldn't have issues like this to start with. If it's recommended to make restore disks, then do so now. I would also recommend using the drive make's free utility to give it a good check-up.

 

thanks again, I will take a look, I use VBox within my Linux Mint desktop pc for running & getting to know different distros and also a win Vista vm, so I am already doing that to some extent. I just got this laptop and of course it has Win 7 on it (machine is a Toshiba) so I intend running it for a while, so far a lot of grief though, I suspect I will last a few months then put Linux on it so that I can actually have happy computing, I am worried about this damn bad sector stuff though and will proably call Toshiba tomorrow and give them a very serious mouthful, maybe demand a new hd, just to be sure.

Yes, the machine is less than a week old, it really shouldnt have these issues imho, i just ran chkdsk again and there are no bad sectors showing in the files but there are 64kb of bad sectors according to the report/log, I guess windows has replaced (re-allocated) these bad sectors, I still dont like it though.
Thanks for mentioning the restore disks, yes the first thing I did after delivery was create these restore discs (2 dvds) using the Toshiba app. 2 days later I had to use it after something happened that stopped it from booting into windows, I can only guess that it was a large Office update from MS that corrupted the system, anyway, I ripped that garbage out and went for Open Office after my full restore/re-installation.

In response to your suggestion, I cant find the drive manufacturers testing utility anywhere on the machine, there is a Toshiba app that does a very small and brief test on the system including the hd and it reports that its working fine.

 

Well, the drive make is usually mentioned in device manager and the full utility should be available at their site. I don't know Toshiba but that really sounds like it's just doing a SMART test on it, the full utilities that I've used are way more powerful than that.

BTW, give W7 a chance, it's way better than Vista.

 

It will almost certainly not be on the laptop's HD. You will need to go to the HD manufacturer's website and download it. Then either create a floppy or bootable cd and run the long test. It will take some time especially on large drive 2hrs+ but worth it.

As example Seagate drives use Seatools, Hitachi uses Drive fitness.

I know what you mean a much better and stable system altogether. Open Office is so pleasant to use.

Good Luck

 

My advice : Take it back to where you bought it from, or contact them as soon as possible.

Don't stuff around with it any more as that may give "them" an excuse to dodge their responsibilities. Let them fix it.

Bazza