Hard drive has bad sectors

Chris_C
Chris_C Member Posts: 24 New User
in 2014 Archives

I have an Acer Aspire 5253 laptop with a Toshiba MK2565GSX hard drive. I ran a diagnostics test on the hard drive which found 40 bad sectors out of 2500. I'm wondering how this will affect the performance of the hard drive and what I can do to fix the problem, if anything

Answers

  • philetus
    philetus ACE Posts: 4,759 Pathfinder

    You can run error checking in Windows:

    http://www.wikihow.com/Repair-Bad-Sectors

    but when you start getting bad sectors it's time to replace it.

  • Chris_C
    Chris_C Member Posts: 24 New User

    Thanks for your reply. I went to the link you suggested, http://www.wikihow.com/Repair-Bad-Sectors. It describes a process for repairing bad sectors with Win XP & Win 7 by right clicking on Drive C, then clicking on Properties, Tools, Check Now, and Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors.

     

    Unfortunately, this laptop has Win 8.1, which does not give the option of repairing bad sectors. When you click on Properties, then Tools, it lets you check the drive for system errors but when I do that it doesn't find anything wrong. I know there are bad sectors because an independent program, HD Tune, said there are 40.

     

    This laptop originally came with Windows 7 but when it became corrupted I replaced it with Win 8.1. After installation it worked for a while but then refused to boot up so I reinstalled Win 8.1. I found in talking to Acer that they don't support Win 8.1 on this laptop but I'm told that it should probably work anyway. I was advised to check for bad sectors, however, which might have caused the previous difficulty booting up. I purchased the Win 7 installation disks from Acer & I could reinstall Win 7 to try to fix the bad sectors, but I'm wondering if there's something else I could try without doing that.

     

     

  • IronFly
    IronFly ACE Posts: 18,413 Trailblazer

    You can schedule a checkdisk on windows 8 and see what it will report.

     

    from the metro screen, type CMD, right click on "command prompt" and click on "run as administrator"

     

    then type

    chkdsk /R

     

    say yes to schedule a checkdisk on the next reboot and reboot.

    I'm not an Acer employee.
  • Alan-London
    Alan-London ACE Posts: 793 Pioneer

    I would advise not to attempt bad sector recovery. Frankly, not only is it a waste of time but will almost certainly result in the sector failing at a later write attempt. The danger is that next time you may lose data! If it's bad, leave it marked bad. That way you don't risk your data writing to known bad sectors.

     

    A sector cannot be rejuvenated once found bad. A 'fixer' will attempt to write and read a bad sector and, if it succeeds, it simply resets the relevant flag in the bad sector table. (This table exists on all HDDs and likely contains some flagged sectors before the drive even leaves the factory - they don't throw drives away any more than they bin LCD displays because of a couple of bad pixels.) While nobody wants bad sectors, where they exist, you really want them to be flagged as 'bad' so that it can be ignored and no further attempts will be made to use that area of the disk.

     

    I would recommend that you inspect your S.M.A.R.T report frequently (use 'HD Tune' or similar) and note the number of bad sectors reported. If it shows a constant figure then all well and good. However, should it show a continuing rise then it is time to replace the drive before disaster happens.

     

  • Chris_C
    Chris_C Member Posts: 24 New User
    Thank you both for your replies. The laptop belongs to a friend but I'll try to check it periodically to see if the number of bad sectors increases. I'll also try check disk to see what it tells me. Does the computer normally write to bad sectors? How does flagging the bad sectors stop this? How many bad sectors have to accumulate before the computer is not worth keeping? Is it possible to replace the hard drive or is that not worth the cost?
  • philetus
    philetus ACE Posts: 4,759 Pathfinder

    When it flags a bad sector it no longer writes to it.

  • Alan-London
    Alan-London ACE Posts: 793 Pioneer

    No. Bad sectors, once found bad, are never written to again (unless the bad sector table entry is reset). This is internal to the HDD, Windows has no interest in where data is stored - it is handled by the HDD firmware. The HDD firmware detects bad sectors as they occur and 'ropes' them off. Windows has no knowledge of the process.

     

    Bad sectors do pop up simply through usage and may not normally be a cause for major concern. However, high occurrences are likely to be indicative of a serious problem and likely indicate a terminal failure just around the corner. If this were the case, you could continue to use the drive but you would be well advised to secure your important data! Drives do and will fail sooner or later. When they do fail, simply replace the drive. It has no bearing on the general wellness of the computer. Drives are reasonably cheap these days and certainly far less costly than replacing the computer. (In fact, I've never heard of a computer being discarded because of a failed HDD!)

     

  • philetus
    philetus ACE Posts: 4,759 Pathfinder

    On the bottom of the laptop there is a cover held on by two screws. Remove it and the HDD is there.

    ms312fgzod7V-XGJG2exh9A.jpg

  • Chris_C
    Chris_C Member Posts: 24 New User
    Thanks for the information. The laptop is still working but I'll check out the price of a new hard drive just in case.
  • Chris_C
    Chris_C Member Posts: 24 New User
    Thanks, I know where that cover is. I changed the memory chip a couple of months ago. I didn't know you could change the hard drive there, too. God bless!
  • Chris_C
    Chris_C Member Posts: 24 New User
    Can you tell me how to get into the metro screen? I thought I could get there by pressing F8 or F10 but when I do that with this laptop it goes through an automatic repair process. it gives me the option of troubleshooting but I didn't see Command Prompt as a choice.
  • Chris_C
    Chris_C Member Posts: 24 New User
    Also, do you know anything about Ultimate Boot CD? Someone from a previous question suggested using it to diagnose the hard drive & memory. I downloaded UBCD but haven't figured out how to use it yet. It gives you a menu but when you select a category & click "Enter" nothing happens.
  • philetus
    philetus ACE Posts: 4,759 Pathfinder

    Did you burn the image to a cd? Here is how to use it.

    http://wiki.ultimatebootcd.com/index.php?title=Tutorials

  • Chris_C
    Chris_C Member Posts: 24 New User
    Yes, I burned it to a CD. Thanks for the link to the tutorial. I'll take look!
  • Chris_C
    Chris_C Member Posts: 24 New User
    I'm having another problem now. The computer is working slowly, sometimes taking excessive time to respond to the keyboard. When I go online I'll click on a news article. The browser goes there but when I try to scroll down to read the article the screen freezes up. Windows says, "Internet Explorere is not responding," tries to restore the web page, but nothing is fixed. The last time I used the laptop, a couple of weeks ago, this did not happen. I did a complete virus scan and there is no malware on the computer. All the temporary files have been deleted. HD Tune shows 41 bad sectors, as opposed to 40 the other day. Does this sound like the laptop needs a new hard drive, or could this be a problem with Win 8.1? Acer supports Win 8 for this computer, Aspire 5253, but not 8.1, although I've been told that 8.1 should still work.
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