Testing An Old Hard Drive To Ensure Reasonable Health

I have a hard drive that is from a 10 year old computer. the hard drive has not been used all that much recently.

right now the hard drive has Windows Vista installed on it but I've backed up all important files.

I'm using what seems to basically be an operating system to repartition the drive
http://www.system-rescue-cd.org

in the system rescue CD there's a program called G parted which seems to let me delete the two partitions

on the hard drive I see that there's
1) a small unallocated partition of about 4 MB
2) a system recovery partition that is about 8 GB
3) the installed operating system and files

I have not fully decided what I'm going to do with this drive once I test it to make sure it's in reasonable good health. probably use it for creating disk images of my other computer's main operating system partition. Or, I might just install Windows 10 on it and have it as another computer.

the thing I'm concerned about is the unallocated space that is on the drive. By deleting the two existing partitions those partitions will become unallocated and everything will be mixed together. Then I'll be creating one large partition so the unallocated space won't be there anymore.

are there possible negative consequences to messing with that unallocated space?

 

An interesting dilemma. My first reaction is from it being 10 yrs old. I would lean towards keeping it as is in case of every coming around a 10 yr old pc to bring back to life. Tinkering.
I've seen it said that some disk or os's keep a unallocated space for compatibility with other systems/ os's. For that reason I would have to decide on the future use as you are doing now.
I would not go for installing newer windows on this drive due to age.
I see all the hiccups and headaches Win10 updates are giving people with parts newer than yours, but not recent, hardware. If you put too much faith in this disk, I believe it will prove to be disappointing in the long run. New disk are easy to come by price wise and if thinking of Win10, I would use only the latest available hardware to try to ensure a decent and enjoyable outcome. Is it IDE, pata or sata?

If anything I would use it as a scratch disk. Somewhere to store photos, or music or even virtual machines or maybe even try various linux distros on. And even then I would regularly copy or backup anything on it that I really wanted to keep.

As for the price of a new disk, I have even recently obtained used business laptops and mini-tower desktops with win7 pro and ultimate with upgraded ram and disk for 99$ - 149$ and none quite 10 yrs old.

 

It seems to be a sata drive, from what I can gather by looking at it while it's on.
From memory, I think it's sata 3.

I don't even remember pata's but I am still catching up on some old technologies.

You are right about old technology being being pretty affordable. But, not really as affordable as you might think. (I was browsing ebay for computers in the sub $100 range and not too much that looked interesting. So many of the users insist on overnight shipping and possibly not even printing their own label.)

Even though the computer is old, it hasn't been used much since 2011. Some drives just last (not that I am claiming that this one has but we'll see. In fact, it probably wasn't maintained well at all [cleaning neglect]).

I believe system-rescue-cd is a distro of linux, though not something that many would use on a daily basis. Interestingly, it has a gui and firefox. I could install Linux mint on it as I am a curious about how that compares to Ubuntu.

I will have an opportunity to pick up more parts as I get $40 per month in Staples rewards, which can also be $80 every other month (but no longer due to expiration dates). I think that pretty much anyone can get $20 per month just by buying ink every 6 months and then buying empty ink cartridges to turn in (and turning those in every month). Between their less than stellar website, product line, and prices, it's not as good as it sounds, though.

 

My idea on older tech was to point out that 'locally' I find complete pc's that are are a source of parts also. I thought from your your post that this was just a drive you had kept, not a complete pc. Sorry for my misunderstanding. If it is a complete machine and you are interested in keeping it and upgrading then you have no reason to be led otherwise. I still believe if it's 10 yrs old that win10 will run into problems down the road.

I can't comment on any online source of materials as I don't use those. I do use online sources for software of which I have had good success.
But to your main question on the possible effects of giving up the unallocated space, it still seems some os's reserve this for compatibility. If going to Win10 , if you do a fresh install, I'm sure it will set up what is needed/ required. It may even change whatever you set up using the rescue disk. Someone who has actually done what you are contemplating may have a more exact response. I'm curious too, so I will watch for what other may have to say!

 

Only if you one day want to go back to Vista.

 

Yes, it's a complete PC. It's interesting that this 2007 HP computer is much more nicely constructed versus the HP that I bought in 2015. the 2007 has 2 3.5 inch bays, and 4 (2 extra) ram slots. The 2015 HP PC has 1 3.5 inch bay, and 2 ram slots. The 2007 one also has a media drive bay, smart media reader, compact flash reader, and some other stuff. You can probably take out some of the stuff that I mentioned in the previous sentence and fit another 3.5 inch drive.

But yea, it's fun having various parts and and computers to explore. How could you ever get tired of that I was entertaining the idea of installing an (old) lto3 tape drive into my desktop computer. But, there is a reasonable chance that it wouldn't work on Windows 10 and it's a lot of work and not really useful anywhere else and time is limited

I am interested in turning cell phones into something more useful (as a first step, getting rid of anything that google has installed on it that isn't 95%+ serving my interests)

As an aside, I was reading a few days ago about ham radio. That'd be fun, too.

 

I have Tinkered with so many hard drives and all windows operating systems. If ditching Vista,I would use a new operating system- Windows 7/8.1, and even W10.
If you have 2gb , or,more ram- W7 will run quite well-W8.1 might need 4gb to give you good system-, same with W10, although Microsoft only recommended min of 1gb ram (with 1gb ram you will not njoy any of them)
Your processor , and graphics chip will decide which will run best .
https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/help/10737/windows-7-system-requirements
https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/help/12660/windows-8-system-requirements
https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows/windows-10-specifications

Vista machines always appeared to run W7 sweetly, for me.

 

I posted over in the HP forums and someone there said the chances with Windows 10 are not too good.
The computer is an HP Desktop a6040n.

I probably wont go for Windows 7 because the end of life is in 18 months.

I think I will go with Linux Mint. But I am really just installing that so that I can test the drive with gparted. For some reason, Gparted seemed to be working on testing unallocated space. I am surprised that it wrote, read, rewrote, reread, etc on unallocated space. But, it seems to work.

 

^--- mistake in my above post
Not gparted, System rescue cd with running badblocks -wsv and some other commands from the command line.