Dead HDD? Reallocated Sectors Count decreases.

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  1. Posts : 13
    Windows 7 Ultimate x64
    Thread Starter
       #11

    Man, I felt extremely hopeful and happy when I saw your message madcratebuilder. Sorry for the late post, but could you tell me what kind of option should I use to repair my HDD. I'm pretty new in this kind of software, and I really don't know with what should I start. Also, here's an image with the HDD-Sentinel info. I'm sure that it looks pretty bad, but I guess that there will be some changes after using Puran Utilitiess. Thank you!
    Attached Thumbnails Attached Thumbnails Dead HDD? Reallocated Sectors Count decreases.-rff.png  
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  2. Posts : 13
    Windows 7 Ultimate x64
    Thread Starter
       #12

    Sorry for this questions guys, but right now I got pretty confused. I managed to get a bootable USB flash drive, so I started to repair my HDD using HDD Regenerator. The process took almost two hours, and surprinsingly, no bad sector was even found in order to be repaired. The same thing I got with CHKDSK. He was analyzing my whole HDD, but at the "bad sectors" category nothing was found. Is it possible to be a false alarm? Or it may be a physical problem ? Thank you!
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  3. Posts : 1,686
    Windows 7 x64 Ultimate and numerous virtual machines
       #13

    Nope, sorry to inform you of this again, your hard drive in NOT repairable, it has faled and you need to back up URGENTLY and replace the drive. Sometimes when the drive is corrupt it can be straightened out but honestly in my experience (4 defective Seagate Hard Drives so far this year alone) once the drives get this far they are only good to get the data off if you are lucky. Then they make good door stops. Back up your data and replace the drive.
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  4. Posts : 1,686
    Windows 7 x64 Ultimate and numerous virtual machines
       #14

    madcratebuilder said:
    Reallocated sectors counts is not necessarily a sign of impending doom and destruction. I would do a backup to be safe. Reallocated sectors counts can be from a disk surface defect or bad read/write heads. You have spare sectors to be reallocated, use them.

    I recommend using "Hard disk sentinel" to check drive health and the "disk check" in "Puran Utilities" to repair the hdd. I have used this method to recover bad sectors in hdd's that returned to good health and continued to operate with 100% reliability. If it's a disk surface problem that's generally fixable, if it's the heads, that is not fixable. The Hard Disk Sentinel web site has a lot of very good info on hhd's, repairs and failure rates. Since SMART has been around for some time now and the generated data has been complied and studied, it shows that a reallocated sector does not increase the likelihood of hdd failure by more than 15%.
    I am in total disagreement with your disk surface recovery advice. I have never in 25 years of messing with dying hard drives been able to recover one that is that far gone. Yes sometimes CHKDSK may fix a few errors but this is a complete failure and in a matter of days the drive will be toast. Purran Utilities is just using the Windows repair tools with a fancy UI.
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  5. Posts : 2,497
    Windows 7 Pro 64 bit
       #15

    Chkdsk works well with logical errors when the hardware is sound. But when dealing with hardware errors it will often make things worse. SMART detects only hardware errors and has no knowledge of files, folders, or even file systems.
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  6. Posts : 1,045
    Win8/8.1,Win7-U64, Vista U64, uncounted Linux distor's
       #16

    Indianatone said:
    madcratebuilder said:
    Reallocated sectors counts is not necessarily a sign of impending doom and destruction. I would do a backup to be safe. Reallocated sectors counts can be from a disk surface defect or bad read/write heads. You have spare sectors to be reallocated, use them.

    I recommend using "Hard disk sentinel" to check drive health and the "disk check" in "Puran Utilities" to repair the hdd. I have used this method to recover bad sectors in hdd's that returned to good health and continued to operate with 100% reliability. If it's a disk surface problem that's generally fixable, if it's the heads, that is not fixable. The Hard Disk Sentinel web site has a lot of very good info on hhd's, repairs and failure rates. Since SMART has been around for some time now and the generated data has been complied and studied, it shows that a reallocated sector does not increase the likelihood of hdd failure by more than 15%.
    I am in total disagreement with your disk surface recovery advice. I have never in 25 years of messing with dying hard drives been able to recover one that is that far gone. Yes sometimes CHKDSK may fix a few errors but this is a complete failure and in a matter of days the drive will be toast. Purran Utilities is just using the Windows repair tools with a fancy UI.
    Disagreement is good. I do agree, now that the OP has posted more info, that the hdd in question is not recoverable.

    As far as recovering from RSC's, I have recovered dozens of hhd's that have gone on to be serviceable for years. These generally had a low number of reallocated sectors. A single reallocated sector triggers the SMART health flag. Most drives I have recovered have had fewer than 20 bad sectors, that's a small amount and the manufacturers set aside a area on the drive for this type of recovery operation. The manufacture expects the product to encounter reallocated sectors and provides spare sectors on the drive specifically for this purpose. Drives have reallocated sectors when they leave the manufacture.

    The OP's hhd reallocated count was over 3300 sectors. He's dead Jim. Jim, he's dead. Dammit Jim, I'm a Doctor, not a brick mason. A count that high is probably a damaged head unable to read the surface.
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  7. Posts : 13
    Windows 7 Ultimate x64
    Thread Starter
       #17

    I understood. Sorry for making you guys angry, it's not like I want to take something for you, of course not. I've been just hoping that in this whole thing may exist a sollution for my HDD. That's because the idea of dying is the only reason for replacing it. I know, I use to be as obstinate as a mule. But maybe sometimes just because I don't wanna give up from start. For that I had the impression that I'm on my good way of repairing my HDD. But now I'm sure that actually there's no possible way. Anyway, I really want to give you all my appreciation for the support given, because I surely learnt a lot from this situation. So we can say that even at worst things we can find something good. I'm sorry for all the trouble again, and thank you for brightening my mind !
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  8. Posts : 1,686
    Windows 7 x64 Ultimate and numerous virtual machines
       #18

    Takuya55 said:
    I understood. Sorry for making you guys angry, it's not like I want to take something for you, of course not. I've been just hoping that in this whole thing may exist a sollution for my HDD. That's because the idea of dying is the only reason for replacing it. I know, I use to be as obstinate as a mule. But maybe sometimes just because I don't wanna give up from start. For that I had the impression that I'm on my good way of repairing my HDD. But now I'm sure that actually there's no possible way. Anyway, I really want to give you all my appreciation for the support given, because I surely learnt a lot from this situation. So we can say that even at worst things we can find something good. I'm sorry for all the trouble again, and thank you for brightening my mind !
    No one is angry. We always have a healthy discussion and sometimes what has been suggested would have fixed your drive. But yours is too far gone. More heads looking at issues is best. No one can be 100% correct, there will always be a time when thinking outside of the box fixes something. Good Luck get a new HD quickly before it stops working.
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  9. Posts : 13
    Windows 7 Ultimate x64
    Thread Starter
       #19

    Hey guys, sorry for this late post, it's not that I'm trying to save my HDD again, I'm just wondering about something. For the last two weeks the Reallocated sectors count stopped at 4035 bad sectors. I know that this is a really big amount, and also I'm gonna get my new HDD this week, but I'm just curious to know why the amount of bad sectours didn't raise more than this. I mean that it was increasing daily, from 3700 bad sectors to 4035, but in the last two weeks the amount stopped at this number. What should this mean? Can it represent something good or I should just ignore it because the HDD is already going to be dead? Also, I wanna mention that for "no reason" my free space has decreased pretty much without installing or downloading something. I guess that this is because of the bad sectors. But I wonder if this free space could be restored because the amount has stopped for two weeks at 4035. Just wondering, not gonna start and save again, because I know that at this rate it would be impossible. Thank you!
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  10. Posts : 2,497
    Windows 7 Pro 64 bit
       #20

    There is a limit to the number of sectors that can be reallocated. When that number is reached bad sectors will no longer be reallocated. That number is not documented.
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