🚀 go-pugleaf

In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage Penang <kalambong@gmail.com> wrote:
> I need to to know if people with huge capacity SATA hard drives (500GB
> and up) have the following problem :

> Bought a new hard drive, install it, formatted the disk, install the
> OS, use it for 2 months, and then weird things start popping up.

> The hard drive that I am using is Western Digital's WD6400AAKS -- a
> 640GB hard drive.

> I bought it to replace my 250 GB drive, which is running out of
> capacity. I do a lot of video editing.

> Bought the hard drive back in 2nd of July this year. Install the hard
> drive into my PC, partitioned it into 2 logical volume (Drive C: and
> Drive D:) and then install the OS onto it. The OS that I use is Win
> XP. The HD is formatted under NTFS file system.

> Drive C: has 30 GB and the rest, about 570GB, falls under drive D:

> I ran chkdsk (check disk) on both partitions (chkdsk /f /r /x) and
> there wasn't any error. So I thought I had bought a good drive and was
> feeling very happy.

First mistake: Chkdsk doe snot check the disk at all. It only lok
s at the filesystem medatada. Use a long SMART selftest for a disk
ckeck (can be started with most SMART tools).

> It runs okay for 2 months, and then ...

> Sometimes when I start my PC, the PC can't find the drive.

> Other times, the PC can find the drive, but running extra ordinarily
> slow.

> I dropped down to the Command Prompt level, use "chkdsk" again to
> check what's wrong.

> The command that I use is still the same "chkdsk /x /r /f" --- to
> dismount the disk, and to "fix" the disk if there is anything wrong,
> and to check (recover) bad sector.

> Long and behold, there _ARE_ bad sectors !!

Nad, Vey bad.

> Drive C has 82KB of bad sectors, and Drive D has 288KB of bad sectors.

> This is a drive that I'd just used for 2 months !! And the
> manufacturing date (the date stamped on the label of the drive)
> indicated that it was made June, 2008. In all account, this is a _NEW_
> drive, and it is developing BAD SECTORS !!!

So? The technical term is infant mortality. It happens and is
one of the reasons youy need backup.

> The 250GB drive that I used never gave me any problem. This 640GB,
> however, worries me !

> I know that 400KB of bad sector, for a 640GB (actually it's 597GB
> after formatted) hard drive, is insignificant. But still, bad sectors
> are still BAD SECTORS, and I am afraid that the bad sectors would
> spread !!

Any bad sectors are significant. The occasional single one might not 
be, but that is 800'000 bas sectors, if your diagnosis is right,
an a reason to toss the driev.

> That is why I am posting this message, asking the people who have more
> experience than me in using huge capacity hard drive --- is the bad
> sectors common occurrance?

> Or that I'm just too unlucky to get myself a lemon?

I would think lemmon.

> BTW, the hard drive is EXTREMELY HOT, not warm, but VERY HOT !!! I do
> not have the actual temperature in it (I do not know if there is any
> utility out there that would give me the drive's actual temperature)
> but when I touch the drive, it was very HOT !!!

Speedfan, e.g., displays dirve temperature. Temperature is one of
the main HDD killers. 

So, get a SMART utility, run along SMART selftes and
look at the SMART attributes (or post them here). Chkdsk
is unusable for HDD diagnostics.

Arno