Hi Everyone! I am not sure what I am doing (or what I should do), so I need to get some advice.
I have a 2TB WD Book Drive (external drive)
It has been VERY slow to read for years and I usually just use it for back up sake and never really draw data out of it.
A few days ago I did a surface test to see whats going on. and I found out there are 78 bad sectors. Not a huge number I'd say, but the diagnostic also said the MFT is corrupted.
Qeustion is, should I do a low level format? Or are there better ways at handling this?

thanks everyone!

First question - NO, second - YES.

Well, that's a bit laconic !

@ambivalence
78 bad sectors is quite a lot, not in the disaster territory yet but too much for storing anything important on that drive anymore. The best that can be done, IMO, would be to run a full read scan with HD Tune or better HD Sentinel (more accurate, provides a list of bad blocks' LBA = logical binary addresses), to see if new bad sectors appear, and visualize if they are grouped in the same area, or sprinkled all over the surface. In the first case, it may be possible to make it work properly, for a while, by re-partitioning it in a way that the bad area is completely bypassed, with a good safety margin (usually the MFT is located around the 3GB mark, so if the bad sectors are concentrated around that area -- for good reason, since the MFT is accessed very often -- then creating a new partition beyond 5GB and letting the first 5GB as unallocated space may do the trick -- add at least 1-2GB before the first and/or beyond the last identified bad sector). That way you could use it for instance to watch movies that you got stored elsewhere, or to bring with you on a trip, things like that, where it won't matter if it fails for good. In the second case, it's probably not worth the trouble.

Oh wow! thanks for the response!
So after waiting a day or two i didnt get much response here, so I went and did a Low level Format with a tool called "HDD Low Level Format". The drive is now empty and I did a chkdsk and it show no bad sector. I dont know if it's because its empty. I dont plan to fill up the drive with data yet, and even if i do, its going to be a backup drive for peace of mind, not intend to use it for any heavy read/write purpose.

Please take a look at the screenshot at the error that the drive had. I can see there's 4 instances, back to back, that gives error. It doesnt translate to the number of bad sector, but I hope there's some information someone can extract from this.

I'm far from the level of expertise of some around here, but my guess would be that the drive got a shock at some point while functioning, which caused limited surface damage on all 4 sides of 2 platters (or two shocks on a single platter unit ? not sure...), like a small scratch on the magnetic coat. And so it may function normally for quite some time if those areas are never touched again by the read/write heads. You could try creating a partition starting from 10GB, leaving the first 10GB unallocated, and see how it goes. Using a known defective drive for backup purposes doesn't seem like the wisest idea, but hey, it's a free country (or at least that's what they want us to believe -- they lie to everybody, they lie to the fish!).

You should have noted the number of bad sectors before the so-called “low level format” and after -- it most likely has increased.

What's surprising is that none of the identified bad areas is located where the MFT should be, if the drive had a single partition and if the MFT was in a single extent. Generally (when formatted with a recent version of Windows) the MFT begins at exactly 3GB from the beginning of the partition (sector 6291456) and its size rarely exceeds 1GB (which corresponds to about 1 million files / folders). It can get fragmented, though. Too late to check that obviously.

The name of this tool is misleading . It just erase the drive.

@BGman
Could you (or anyone) comment on what I wrote above ? Is my hypothesis consistent, and my suggestion weasonable ?

we don't really bother reusing such drives, whatever the theories are. It might be worth trying zero-filling it, if that does not 'heal' it, then it's for the bin. Can be used for parts, door stopper, i also made candles from hard drives, pouring transparent 'wax' and put a wick. Just some ideas.

pepe

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Adatmentés - Data recovery

I like the candle idea, that’s a Christmas present idea right there!

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http://www.pcimage.co.uk

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yes, that's exactly what it was
... to a client of mine (DR guy)...

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oh... I have been deceived!

I'm not afraid of using hard drives with bad sectors. As a matter of fact this computer boots from a 500GB HGST drive having a partition named DNU covering the bad zone . I'm using this drive for 4-5 years....

Well it's been called like that for decades (the generic operation, not this particular software obviously), so one should be aware of its purpose even if the name doesn't accurately describe it to the layman (or woman). It's a bit like a “soapbox” or a “passage clouté” -- there are no soaps or nails to speak of (anymore), but the damn thing still has a purpose.


It would seem to me, as I suggested yesterday, that it depends on the pattern of the bad sectors and how they appeared in the first place ; a few bad sectors appearing on a limited area after a minor shock, on an otherwise well functioning drive, would tend to be, I guess, less dangerous, if completely left untouched afterward, than a few bad sectors appearing at random, at various spots, which tends to indicate an impending failure of the whole unit.

thanks everyone. After the "fake Low Level Format" I still havent touch the drive.
What i will do as you have mentioned is to Zero-Fill the drive using cmd.

After Zero Filling should I use a particular way to diagnosis the drive? I feel like I dont even know what I am doing is meaningful. is such turotrial even helpful? (other than trying to sell you their software)

https://macrorit.com/disk-surface-test/ ... ctors.html

You sure do like monty python!

can I ask another question?
Is there a difference of using MBR or GPT format for a drive that has partition problem.

From what I read on google, it seems like I should make it a GPT drive?

Well, I haven't tried that particular software, but what is generally called “low level format” is precisely a zero-fill (or something to that effect -- it could just as well be a FF-fill). So if you open the drive with a hexadecimal editor (for instance with WinHex : “Tools” => “Open disk”) you should see that it's already empty, no need to hammer it all over again (as it will once again try to fix the bad sectors, and most likely expand them a little bit more). If you really do want to keep on using that drive until it can't hold a byte without peeing itself, you should identify where the bad areas are located, then never attempt to read them or write on them ever again.

As for MBR vs. GPT, that quote may be interesting in general, but if you already know a drive to be faulty, you shouldn't use it to store anything that would need to be recovered in case of an impending SNAFU, period.

Hello Everyone, here's an update using HD Sentinel.
7% health! hah. This is bad.

I did a short self test. A Disk Read Test. Found 2 bad sector. (Not 708 on the warning page)
I tired to do a disk repair and everytime I do it the drive shut down and I have to plug-in, plug out the drive.
So finally I settled with a Reinitializing the Disk Surface. Then I left it empty until today.

Any comments/suggestions/insights with the information from the photo?

The drive has a scratch on one of its surfaces. Can be repaired , but not by you.

ah I see!
If I keep using it will the damage grow?