Switch to full style
Data recovery and disk repair questions and discussions related to old-fashioned SATA, SAS, SCSI, IDE, MFM hard drives - any type of storage device that has moving parts
Post a reply

TOSHIBA MK1637GSX recycling

August 5th, 2009, 13:37

hi
i'm an amateur seeking some advice on how to reuse a defective drive. it's a 160GB 2,5" drive i replaced in someone's laptop. i checked it and it had some bad sectors, so the owner decided to replace it with a new one, because he can't afford an unreliable drive. i recovered the stuff he wanted, he is happy and i'm left with the "junk".
as it was laying on a shelf for the past few months and i ran out of space on my lappy, i decided to give it a chance. i want to use it as a space for stuff i don't mind losing.
using systemrescuecd and unix badblocks i gathered a list of bad sectors (1024b blocks) - there are about 20 of them. by looking at the numbers, i think i could use most of the drive's space except of 2 or 3 ranges of blocks. i'd like to create a partition with ntfs filesystem. and here's the dillema:
1. is it better to make 3 or 4 ntfs partitions ommiting the bad blocks ("manually")
-or-
2. to make one big partition and pray to Lord that ntfs detects and marks the bad blocks i already know about
?

is there some kind of tool to manually feed the partitioning/formatting utility with a list of defective sectors i acquired using badblocks? (i know unix utilities can do this - but i don't want a ext?fs - compatibility, you know)
is there a way to make sure windows doesn't allocate MFT on those bad blocks? (i read bad-blocks-mft-t12787.html#p84111)

TIA for advice ;)

Re: TOSHIBA MK1637GSX recycling

August 5th, 2009, 13:49

You could start by zerofilling the drive with MHDD etc. Hardware bad sectors should get remapped and software bads should get fixed.

Re: TOSHIBA MK1637GSX recycling

August 5th, 2009, 13:53

strange thing i noticed, after doing a write-read test (-w swich) and then repeating it, the reallocated sector count doesn't change in SMART.
atm it's being tested with a different pattern and new bad blocks appear on the list... i'm getting more and more sceptical.

Re: TOSHIBA MK1637GSX recycling

August 5th, 2009, 13:53

zerofill is a cosmetic solution but can be sufficient for amateur. Otherwise need special gear and knowledge to make it feel "brand new" again :D

P.S. if when filling other error appear, the drive need to be serviced for good and is NOT reliable for storage until fixed.

Re: TOSHIBA MK1637GSX recycling

August 5th, 2009, 20:58

[a few beers later]

http://pastebin.ca/1519947

the reallocated sector count increased by 4 (raw value) after this test.
vote:
a) give it a spin
b) let it rust

:)

Re: TOSHIBA MK1637GSX recycling

August 6th, 2009, 2:06

I have option c) repair it - but have to send it in.
Post a reply