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After 7 years of using my Western Digital Caviar Black WD1002FAEX-00Z3A0 1Gb HDD looks like this: https://i.stack.imgur.com/5Bcpq.jpg

I did this Victoria test after experiencing some glitches while watching movies. So, I have 1051110+21155+28797+24313+213+47 = 1125635 = 549 Mb of sectors, which are taking 20+ ms to respond. Can I somehow get rid of them, so HDD will just skip them and don't use them?

I don't want to throw away this disk. I want to know, what can I do to continue using this HDD.

koroveo
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    If you cannot buy a new HDD, instead buy a new SSD. – jscott Oct 02 '17 at 13:34
  • "*I don't want to throw away this disk*" I don't care. You **need** to throw away this disk. Either the data on it is valueless, in which case throw it out with the drive, or it isn't, in which case invest in a new drive and swap it in at the earliest possible opportunity. You got seven years out of an HDD; well done, but its life is over. – MadHatter Oct 03 '17 at 09:16
  • I agree with MadHatter, but I'd like to explain some background on failing sectors. Software still exists to mark blocks as bad, but will ultimately make things worse. The disk already takes care of remapping sectors that don't work anymore, *but*, it can only do that upon write; when a write fails, it may re-allocate that sector. That will cause a bad block marked in *software* to physically exist somewhere else on the drive, marking the wrong sector. For the sake of learning, wipe this drives with zero's, look at the SMART output for pending and reallocated sectors, and run your tool again. – Halfgaar Oct 03 '17 at 09:26
  • @MadHatter, is there a way I could continue using that disk without reading/writing data to these unreliable sectors? Maybe there's a way to somehow tell disk to not to use these specific 549 Mb of sectors, so I'll be able to use remaining good sectors. – koroveo Oct 03 '17 at 09:39
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    You're not listening, either to us or to the HDD. It's not telling you that 99.95% of it is fine and that you should continue to use that portion. It's telling you that 100% of it is failing, and 0.05% of it is already unrecoverably broken. No sane professional would continue to store anything of value on such a disc. – MadHatter Oct 03 '17 at 11:27
  • @MadHatter, now I got it. Thank you for the explanation, now I understand why I can't use that HDD further. – koroveo Oct 03 '17 at 12:29

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Expect those sectors to fail soon, its a first sign that you need to change that HDD.

You cant mark as fail in advance those sectors, but I would not trust that HDD for long

Michael Hampton
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yagmoth555
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  • How can I mark these slow/bad sectors as unusable, so operating system will just skip them, when it's trying to write data on them? – koroveo Oct 02 '17 at 13:51
  • Check with a full chkdsk, if lucky they would be flagged as defect, but its sadly the start of the end for that HDD – yagmoth555 Oct 02 '17 at 13:53
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    You should replace the drive ASAP. My guess is that if they're slow to respond it's likely because it is retrying to read those sectors. – apocalysque Oct 02 '17 at 14:30
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    @koroveo You don't. The drive is failing. It will progressively get worse, and will stop working entirely once firmware sectors are affected. Stop using this drive, copy any important data to another drive, and replace it as soon as possible. –  Oct 02 '17 at 18:21
  • +1 vote for HDD replacement. – Mr. Raspberry Oct 05 '17 at 10:29