Bad sectors playing hide and seek on my hard drive

[CaffeineAddict]

@APTI
My system is installed to SSD, HDD is for backup only, but now you convinced me to check it's health because here and there I noticed issues which I didn't diagnose.

Now take a bad sector (unmarked) and those retries go through the roof and you can see frozen system. The system is attempting to read or write a bad area so it must time out and try again and possibly time out again until it finds a good area.
What this means is that as the drive continues to fail it loses integrity and speed due to the errors.

I agree.

 

[Trenix25]

Why nobody mentions it's important to format your drive and do slow fsck to mark bad sectors as not usable?
If you don't do this bad sectors will be used and then you have RW failures.


Bad sectors can't be replaces but must be marked as "don't use".
Reformat your drive and then do fsck as follows:
sudo mkfs.ext4 -cc -v -t ext4 -L "LabelName" -b 4096 /dev/sdXn

Where sdXn is partition name.
This is very slow fsck, some 12h for 1TB HDD

I can't use such checks with mke2fs. The process locks up.

Signed,

Matthew Campbell

 

[Trenix25]

You may think new HDDs are cheap, but some of us have a really tight budget. I need to be able to buy enough food each month to survive.

Signed,

Matthew Campbell

 

[CaffeineAddict]

I can't use such checks with mke2fs. The process locks up.

Why not? I just checked man page for mke2fs and all parameters are the same.

 

[APTI]

You may think new HDDs are cheap, but some of us have a really tight budget. I need to be able to buy enough food each month to survive.

Signed,

Matthew Campbell

sounds like you need to decide between your data and your tummy. Sounds like you can't have both.

 

[Brickwizard]

A good quality hard drive should last not less than ten to twenty years without any problems

That's not the normally accepted life expectancy on a traditional plate spinner, I quote
"the average life span of a hard drive is approximately three to five years. This number is not absolute because several things affect a hard drive, its life span, and its performance."

I have some HDD's used for testing and storage still going strong at around 18 years old, on the other hand I have changed HDD's in machines that have failed in under 2 years, if it's showing its age time to rescue your files and replace it

 

[bob466]

I have a HDD that's 13 years old and still works...I haven't used for 9 years...does that count.

 

[APTI]

I have a HDD that's 13 years old and still works...I haven't used for 9 years...does that count. View attachment 20923

that is why I like SMART and the power on hours reading. Like an odometer for the drive. My SSD on this pc has 10months 5 days. I have some mechanical drives that read 4 years and more still good. They are exceptions.

 

[Trenix25]

sounds like you need to decide between your data and your tummy. Sounds like you can't have both.

This is why I keep cold storage backups on another drive.

Signed,

Matthew Campbell

 

[Trenix25]

Why not? I just checked man page for mke2fs and all parameters are the same.

I have tried. It has never worked for me.

Signed,

Matthew Campbell

 

[Trenix25]

I have a HDD that's 13 years old and still works...I haven't used for 9 years...does that count. View attachment 20923

I think it only counts spin time.

Signed,

Matthew Campbell

 

[bob466]

I think it only counts spin time.

Signed,

Matthew Campbell

I was thinking cupboard time.

 

[The Duck]

I have HDD that are from 2007 that the "Professionals" said was going to fail and 17 years later I'm still using them.

Just because a hard drive has errors doesn't mean it will fail immediately like the "Professionals" say it is.

I've seen many buy new HDDs SSDs and have them fail OOTB or days and months later.

So yes back up all of your important data and anything else you want to keep and sit back and see what happens.

 

[Trenix25]

I have HDD that are from 2007 that the "Professionals" said was going to fail and 17 years later I'm still using them.

Just because a hard drive has errors doesn't mean it will fail immediately like the "Professionals" say it is.

I've seen many buy new HDDs SSDs and have them fail OOTB or days and months later.

So yes back up all of your important data and anything else you want to keep and sit back and see what happens.

Let's hope it lasts until I can get my new one set up and running.

Signed,

Matthew Campbell