How can I know if HD is flawed?

1

My secondary laptop is so slow and unpredictable that it is unusable. It's an Acer Aspire S3 with i5, 4GB RAM and 320GB HDD. I have always suspected the HD, so I ran HDTune today. Here are the results:

enter image description here

From what I understand these results are horrible (right?). Before I go to purchase a new HD and replace, is there anything else I can check to verify WHY these results are so bad? Can I assume replacing the HD will fix this? (I have ran memtest86+ and no errors came up)

Edit: Added health info: enter image description here

itaysk

Posted 2014-01-18T13:24:03.587

Reputation: 141

1We need to see the health information on the drive in order to help. The reason new users are not allowed to post images is because new users have not proven themselves not to post inappropriate things As for the reason the results are bad, its simple, the drive is likely defective. A specific reason cannot be answered by us, we don't have the drive, and we are not the manufacture of the drive. – Ramhound – 2014-01-18T14:23:29.007

Thanks. I am not looking for a reason why the drive is defective, just a confirmation that it is. Added health info. – itaysk – 2014-01-18T14:59:21.657

1Actually your data says it all - you have some bad sectors (it happens) which have been reallocated (which also happens as a disk gets older). On the other hand its a lot of sectors (which is very very bad) , and there's some sectors waiting for reallocation (which is very bad) - replacing the hard drive will result in a hard drive without these bad sectors, which is good. – Journeyman Geek – 2014-01-18T15:04:55.573

Answers

2

You defintely have some issues with your hard drive. The health information explains what is happening.

Drives keep a number of spare sectors and transparently use them if the original sectors go bad. I am not sure if the slow down is caused by accessing the spare sector, or trying to determine whether or not to swap a sector out. Both probably cause a performance hit.

So you may have damaged areas on the hard drive, but only experience slow down and not OS-reported errors due to this phenomenon.

Dropping a laptop or hard drive could cause this, as can liquid damage. Hard drives also simply wear out, and this is accelerated on laptops due to the fact that they can move while being used, which is not a good thing for spinning hard drives.

LawrenceC

Posted 2014-01-18T13:24:03.587

Reputation: 63 487

Asked: 2014-01-18T13:24:03.587

Viewed: 59 times

Active: 2014-01-18T15:37:59.930