Is this hard drive completey gone?

[Tygur]

Here at work, someone's computer stopped working. When someone tries to turn it on, Windows won't boot, complaining about some file, and suggesting booting off the Windows XP cd and pressing R to recover it.

So I did that, and got to the recovery console, and ran chkdsk. Chkdsk wouldn't run, no matter which of the two switches I tried with it, complaining of "one or more unrecoverable errors".

Fortunately, we had an extra hard drive lying around. I opened up the computer, put it in, and booted off a linux live cd. I used dd to make an exact copy of the NTFS partition on the new drive. Then I unplugged the old hard drive, and ran chkdsk on the copy on the new hard drive, and it worked.

Does this mean the old drive is completely gone, or can it probably be reused elsewhere? I thought it odd that chkdsk refused to run on the original hard drive, but ran fine and fixed errors on an exact copy of the partition on a different drive. While that does seem to suggest a bad hard drive, the fact that linux had no apparent problems reading it, and seemed to encounter no problems copying the data makes me wonder.

[BipolarBill]

Copying the data and copying a partition are two very different things. You can't copy bad sectors - those are physical, not digital.

Since you got the data off, download the drive diagnostic for the brand of drive and check it/erase it. Use it as a spare. If you get errors, ditch it.

[Tygur]

Originally Posted by BipolarBill

Copying the data and copying a partition are two very different things. You can't copy bad sectors - those are physical, not digital.

Since you got the data off, download the drive diagnostic for the brand of drive and check it/erase it. Use it as a spare. If you get errors, ditch it.

I realize bad sectors themselves aren't transferred in the copy - that's why I did it. What's got me confused is the fact that I appear to have gotten data out of these bad sectors, unless I missed something. The fact that they're bad is supposed to mean they can't be read, right (at least not so easily)? Now that I'm thinking about it, maybe the sectors in question could be read fine, but just not written?

Anyhow, that's probably what I'm going to do - test the drive, and if it does get further use elsewhere, do the long format.

[BipolarBill]

Well, if it fails the test, you may be able to get an RMA. We didn't discuss whether it is still under warranty, so I don't know. If it passes, I would still keep an eye on it, but I would format it and use it in a non-critical application.

A full CHKDSK /F /R can be performed anytime. The /R switch checks the entire surface and marks bad sectors as unusable. That would give a bad drive a new life, but my experience has shown that it's a short life.

[Rootstonian]

Agreed Bill. With today's prices, to me, it's not worth losing data on an "iffy" drive.

I have backups of backups (at least 3 copies of my data) at any given time. Heck, I'm so paranoid that I'll even toss a perfectly good drive that's 3 or 4 years old and get a new one. Cheap insurance for my data, IMO.

[strjms72]

You're right, these days it's not such a difficult thing to buy a couple of hard drives... Don't put all your eggs in one basket right