Unused Patition Still Good?

If I partition a HDD and use it for a few years, then the SMART stats begin getting worse, can I switch to using an unused partition and not use the worn partition? I've read that firmware puts data all over the drive, and that partitions are logical.

Still seems to me that the key SMART stats mostly refer to bad sectors and an unused partition has almost all good ones. So unless there's some other problem - head, arm, other issue w/a platter - you should be able to use the unused partition, logical or not. Unless there's some other SMART stat interfering w/locating those good sectors.

I'm about to switch out some old drives but figure I can use them for backup as long as a) they're not always running b) they're redundant (a 3rd or 4th place I park data).

Any thoughts?


Thanks,

Mac

 

Not really. Remember, the read/write head floats above the platters and does not physically touch them. So there is no friction or wear and tear that way. And the number of times you can write to the same sector of a hard disk is almost impossible to reach in a normal lifespan of a hard drive. And remember too, reading causes no wear at all. Writing moves and orientates the magnetic particles to represent a 1 or a 0. But reading simply looks to see how the particles are orientated.

The greater wear is with the drive motor and R/W head stepper motor - and those don't care which partition you are using. The platters still spin and the R/W head still steps back and forth - those are the actions that wear out a drive. Plus the partition and file tables are all part of the same section of the drive.

If you are getting SMART errors, you need to backup your data and start shopping for a new drive. While there is no way to predict exactly when it will fail, all drives will fail - eventually. And yours is giving warning it will likely be sooner rather than later.

 

So first, to reiterate, partitions are logical, and a partition's data is spread all over the drive. So bad sectors (since manufacture) can be anywhere.

Now most sites list a top 4 or 5 SMART stats to monitor, all but 1 of which refer to 'bad sectors'. Besides the arm/head not finding a sector, or a platter-spindle or motor stat, increasing 'sector issues' alert you to move your data. I am about to do so and switch to Windows 10. But as others state, these old drives may function for years. It's simply a crap shoot. I wouldn't trust them in a main system.

I still think I could try them in a RAID because probably only one drive would fail at a time. But only to experiment.

Digerati thanks. Glad I'm ahead of the curve. Would you mind if I ask you a few more Qs?

1. Would you think short stroking a 500GB WD blue with 16MB of cache would wear out controller hardware, or anything else in a year of OS use?
2. Would formatting partitions using different file systems protect against viruses? I plan to use a separate HDD for data and want my images, games and academic stuff there. Haven't had a virus in a decade (w/I attribute mostly to Sandboxie) but downloading files for gaming makes me nervous.

Hey thanks again for the feedback.

 

A1 - would not dare to guess - but generally, the controller hardware is not what fails on electromechanical devices - it is the mechanics. Short stroking does NOT affect wear and tear. All short-stroking does is jam the data into a confined space - typically the front of the platters. "In theory", this improves performance because it means the R/W arm does not need to move the R/W head as far to get to the next file segment. But "in practice", no performance gains are perceived because modern drives have such quick seek times, the first file cluster will be found quickly anyway. And because modern operating systems automatically defrag drives weekly, finding the next file clusters takes no longer as it likely is already next to the first.

And even if you do short stoke, the platter motor still must spin just as much and the R/W arm still must step back and forth just as often. In terms of wear and tear, nothing is saved.

In fact, I would venture to say wear and tear could increase in some scenarios when short-stroking! Remember, latency due to fragmentation is NOT due to the location of the first file cluster. It is due to locations of the remaining file clusters being scattered about the disk. So if you have a huge disk with lots of free space, there is a greater chance the entire file will be stored all together and unfragmented. But because all computers are connected and files are regularly updated, fragmentation starts immediately after defragging when free space is limited. This is exactly why most defragging programs don't bother moving all the files to the beginning of the disk.

Also, when it comes to wear on the magnetic particles, it is the writes, not reads that cause the wear. So if you short-stack, you will be forcing more writes onto a smaller number of particles.

Decades ago when drives were much slower, there might have been a place for short-stacking. IMO today, there isn't. I advise against it.

A2. You don't have to format with a "different" file system. You can use the same - just make sure you select a full format and not "Quick". Full actually touches each disk location while a quick format simply updates the tables.

Alternatively, you can run a "wipe" program on the drive. A single pass is plenty. More than one pass just increases wear and tear on the drive. I like the Drive Wiper feature in CCleaner because it has a wipe free space option so it ensures all the free space is truly clean (of your data or possible malicious code) while leaving the data you want to keep intact.

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I feel you are looking for some sort of affirmation, justification or approval to keep using these drives. Sorry, but you are not going to get it from me. Hard disk space is just too affordable these days to risk losing data or computer up-time.

I will offer this and that's it. Visit the drive maker's site. They all have diagnostics programs for their drives. Run and see what it says. You might also open a cmd prompt "as administrator" and enter chkdsk /r on the drive(s). This might correct current errors but it is common for more errors to occur once they start coming - so this typically, at best, just delays the inevitable, not prevent it. Beyond that, my advice remains the same - start shopping for new drives.

Good luck.