Hi guys,

I have a Samsung HD501LJ HDD that I recovered from an external case which started to click long time back during file transfer and than hanging in windows, yet the disk was not used often.
At the time I ran a couple of times HDD regen thinking it would be help, even it never did, but just to try to put that bad sectors away, but everytime I was running it, it was finding more of them.
Yesterday I used the disk again after a long time and I ran HDAT2 Powerful and bad sectors were found (Read = 10 blocks, 44 sectors)
Reading SMART, Crystal disk Info & Hard Disk Sentinel found 72 bad sectors (600 errors occurred during data transfer).

I don't remember how many bad sectors I had when I ran HDD regen but I believe it's increasing the more I stress this area where bad sectors are, especially because the disk clicks so I suppose I'm damaging it the more it goes there.
Yet, when the disk runs normally, the number of bad sectors are not increasing so it looks like it's in a specific area.

The HDD has 976773168 sectors. It seems bad sectors always appear between 434100000 434500000 so is it possible to condemn this area, by saying to the disk never go there whatever you're doing?
I don't mind loosing a few GB in the process, I'd like to keep using this disk at temporary storage for non important files.
I thought all these software were supposed to do this, yet when it comes to this area, it founds new sectors again so if I can condemn a larger range to make sure nothing goes there, it would be great. If this can be done only in Windows, it's fine for me.

Thanks in advance for your feedback.
Best Regards

It's not something you can just fix through partitioning. The drive will need to have the P-list/translator modified. If it were a Western Digital you could just initiate a self-scan, but for a Samsung it'll be more work than the drive is worth.

Just scrap it and move on.

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Data Medics - Hard Drive, SSD, and RAID Data Recovery Service Company

I would create 3 partitions and leave the middle one unused. Then scan the first and third partitions. If all is well, then you could use the drive for non-critical storage, but I wouldn't trust it. The alternative is to go through a burn-in procedure which recertifies the drive.

More information at the HDD Oracle forum:

http://www.alexsoft.org

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

Hi. I appreciate your answers thank you a lot.
I know it doesn't really worth it, but I feel bad throwing that disk which has barely 4000h of flight.
Plus I was always driven by the marketing "bs" of HDD regen, spinrite & co which never saved any disk in the past for me so I'm very curious about the subject and learned a lot since I'm looking.

I've looked at burn in procedure, I never knew about this, thanks. I found great ways of testing a disk when I receive it mainly using linux & badblocks procedure.
However, I've noticed burn in is used to stress the disk which in my case will probably lead to its death when it will reach the position where it clicks.
Could you please let me know what do you mean by "recertifing" the disk?
I went to the HDD oracle forum, and foud this article http://malthus.mooo.com/viewtopic.php?f ... burn#p2720 but it's completely out of my league as I have no understanding of what to do.

Meanwhile I will probably start with this tonight https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?th ... ing.21451/ and will let you know the result later on.

Get a load of movie files, or copy them again and again until the drive the full, find out which movie file is saved over the bad blocks and then rename the file as BAD that should isolate a large area of disk. then you can delete the rest of the file if they are safe and use the free space.

You will need to run a program that will show you the disk area in a grid with file names along the disk. I use Norton speed disk becase it shows where the files are in the disk.