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To replace a hard drive or not

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by robo_dev

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I am reloading windows on a Toshiba laptop for a co-worker. About three years old, 80GB SATA drive.

System was going BSOD on boot, and there were some bad sectors on the hard drive. So I ran checkdisk, which fixed the bad sectors, made a full backup, and reformatted the drive.

Should I swap the drive to be safe?

I plan to run the full (Hitachi) diags on the drive and read the SMART data to see how healthy it is.

Any recommended utilities for doing a thorough stress-test of the hard drive to gain some confidence that it's not on it's deathbed?

10 replies

by santeewelding

Query it with sweet nothings into its ear. If you hear no thing in response, shiltcan it.

True, a drive is a marvel of human ingenuity and engineering, and cannot be constructed with the bare hand outdoors with forest debris.

But you are also old enough to realize it is modern detritus. Your time and labor, unless a labor of misdirected love, they are worth more.

by robo_dev

that would explain the random and unexplained drive failures.

by echrepublic2012

You can also fix the bad sector problem by PBD(Partition Bad Disk)which scans the disk and isolates bad sectors automatically.

by rockergeek!

if 80GB will still be enough? Do they need more storage space now or will need later? If so, just be one step ahead and buy a new one.

Also, being 3 yrs old, chances are it spins at 5400 RPM... 7200 is the norm now, and it would make the pc a tad faster.

So you can increase storage space, speed and make darn certain there are no bad sectors.

I've repaired bad sectors w/chkdsk and never seen a problem after... but computers and their hard ware are finicky (at best), so you may be lucky, or not. *shrugs* Not sure what kind of tarot cards hardware uses, lol

by robo_dev

So before I rebuild it, I may take a little trip to Fry's Electronics and see what SATA drives are on sale.

There's nothing better in life than going to Fry's Electronics and spending someone else's money.

by robo_dev

This drive is a Hitachi 80GB SATA laptop drive. On Hitachi's site there's a nice bootable ISO for their diags. It lets you read SMART data, do a full surface test, etc.

The 'Advanced' Drive Fitness Test found bad/corrupt sectors on the drive, and I had only reformatted it the day before. This drive is not long for this world.

The "Drive Fitness Test" made me think they would make the poor little drive do push-ups or something....

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