Greetings to all gurus!

I've been facing critical hdd problem recently. I have a desktop SATA hdd of Samsung HD502HJ model. I bought this disk in 2010. It was almost unused for last 1.5 years. Few days back, I wanted to modify my partition table. I checked the SMART status of the disk - everything was okay. Previously I had six partitions. I wanted to make three partitions combining those six. I kept the C partition as it was and made two other 200 GB partitions. I was using Windows Disk Management utility. The first 200 GB partition was created successfully but the second one was taking very long to complete. At one point I felt that the process got stuck. I forced-terminated the process and it made the partition read-only in Windows Explorer. I checked SMART at this point and it was giving warning status with 90+ Current Pending Sector (raw value). I then long-formatted the partition. I checked SMART again and it was reporting 'okay'. There was no Current Pending sector anymore.

But a few days later, when I was booting into Windows, the file system checking was initiated. After logging in to the desktop I checked SMART and found warning with the value of Current Pending Sector as 1. I ran chkdsk on the partition I previously had problem formatting. After taking a long time chkdsk seemed to have got stuck. I terminated the process and took backup of all my data. I checked the SMART status at this point and found that Current Pending Sector was increased to 132. Then I zero-filled the whole partition using CCleaner. I was keeping an eye on the SMART status during this process and noticed that Current Pending Sector value got back to 1 again. When the zero-filling was completed Current Pending Sector value was 24.

I figured there are bad sectors on the drive. I decided to check the drive with manufacturer's diagnostic tool. I ran short and long tests using Samsung's ESTool and Seagates SeaTools. The short tests always failed. The long tests didn't go past 57%. After a long test failure I checked the SMART status using Linux Mint live OS. I found Current Pending Sector value to be 3421! I wanted to low level format the drive using ESTool but it didn't go past the testing phase.

Should I give up any last hope on the drive? Or is there anything left that I can try?

Buy new drive.

Good.


Huh? Why only the partition, then?
WHEN I zero-fill this thing, I always zero-fill the WHOLE drive (Active KillDisk etc.) but would never fiddle around with single partitions!
This might have been a good chance: zero-fill the whole caboodle (AKD: Random single pass is sufficient as there's no sensitive classified government data on it) and then recreate your partitions from scratch.

Spildit ,
Might Be He Can Clean The PCB Contact For Preamp/Motor Once And Try .I Would Say He Should Backup Everything and Then Full Erase HDD And Then Leave it On For a Day 24 Hours Without Any Work And Switch it Off/On And Test disk again [ Might Be Magic Happens ]

_________________
Regards
Amarbir S Dhillon , Chandigarh Data Recovery Labs [India]
Logical,Semi Physical And Physical Data Recovery
Website-> http://www.chandigarhdatarecovery.com

Thanks guys, for your responses.

I didn't want to buy a new drive in the first place because I use the desktop very rarely these days. I didn't want to invest on the machine anymore. So I thought if I could somehow make the drive work I'd go with that. I wouldn't put anything important on it anymore. Maybe I'll just use it as an entertainment hub.

I was finally able to zero-fill the whole drive using Maxtor PowerMax v4.23. It's surprising that Samsung's ESTool failed the job on it's own drive.

Anyway, after zero-filling I checked SMART status from Linux Mint live OS and it reported 'okay' for now - no current pending sectors or reallocated sectors.

I also ran short DST and this time it passed the test.

Now, how can I check the integrity of the drive at this point? I haven't installed any operating system on it yet.

Well,
Keep The drive operating For Some Time .I Mean Switched On For 24 Hours Then check Smart Again And Report

_________________
Regards
Amarbir S Dhillon , Chandigarh Data Recovery Labs [India]
Logical,Semi Physical And Physical Data Recovery
Website-> http://www.chandigarhdatarecovery.com

Well, it didn't take long to get the verdict. I installed Windows 7 on the hdd today. Partitioned the disk and checked SMART. It was okay till then.

Then I ran read benchmark test in HDTune Pro. It failed the test with a read error at the middle of the disk. Also, current pending sector value is now 1.

I'm now thinking to use the first half of the drive and keep the last half unused. I have partitioned the drive like this -

I guess I'll have to buy a new hdd after all. I haven't bought any disk in the recent time. Since there are currently three manufacturers in the market, and Seagate drives aren't quite available in my country, which drive will be best - Western Digital or Toshiba?

Yessss! That was the right approach. FINALLY. *sigh*
I think that'll teach you not to waste your precious time any more with zeroing this partition, and then that partition...

LLF can often make things better (a little). Because a "knackered" partition table resp. structure may get a drive confused easily, and you will have to format the entire physical drive to get things back to normal again (or at least partly). Formatting single partitions will merely help doctoring on symptoms, but not correct things in-depth.
Glad to hear it worked at least a bit. But it can't replace a magic wand