When is it time to give up on a hard drive?

[sonofdbn]

I just had another disk (not on unRaid) dying on me. The first signs were a few files that Win2K said were unreadable when I was trying to copy them. I know they were OK at some point, as I'd already copied them to another PC. In fact I saw the symptoms earlier, but at that time I was copying over a wireless connection and blamed it on the wireless signal being flaky.

 

Fortunately I backed up some vital stuff (like my wife's e-mail) to unRaid and then ran the hard disk error-check as suggested by Windows. (I think it's still called chkdsk?) It required a reboot to run the check, so I did that and the checking got to I think Stage 3 and then it froze. Fortunately I could reboot and get back into Win2K, and I copied a few more files before running into more errors. Then the system hung and I rebooted, only to get the "NTLDR missing" message. At that point I gave up on the hard disk and installed a new one. I lost a few files, but nothing critical (AFAIK  )

 

I'm beginning to think that once there's ANY sign of a hard disk problem (where it's fairly clear that it's the disk and not cables or software) it's probably a good time to salvage as much as possible and then put in a new one, especially with falling hard disk prices (and even more so if the drive is still under warranty). I've read suggestions that reformatting to mark off bad sectors can help, and I've done that a couple of times, but it's always just put off the final crash for a short time. Better to save files while you can rather than risk losing all in a catastrophic crash later on.

 

In the past I used to try to squeeze as much use out of hard disks as possible, but now the Saving Time vs. Saving Money equation has probably tilted more in favour of Saving Time.

 

What do others think? If there's one forum that knows about hard disks, it must be this one!

[mutant_matt]

Spinrite from GRC.com is a good disc saver and also a good preventative maintenance utility.  It doesn't care or mess with the file system so is good for any hard drive, regardless of what system it is for.

 

HTH!

 

Matt