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Damaged Blocks Detected in HD Tune, Failure to Boot
A week or so ago my PC failed to boot Windows 7 (64 bit) from my 1TB Western Digital WD10EARS. The screen would go black after the boot logo (no cursor, monitor was still displaying). after waiting several minutes, I hard shutdown my PC by holding down the power button.
After several attempts to boot with the same results, I attempted to safe boot which would hang while loading CLASSPNP.sys. in short, I could successfully boot after running a full DSKCHK with stages 4 & 5 (which "replaced bad clusters in file 69361 of name /windows/system32/config/software" during stage 4) and running startup repair from my recovery disc.
I thought I had resolved the issue until I booted up the next day, during which the same problem had returned. After going through the same recovery process again (DSKCHK + startup repair) I could once again successfully boot. though this time I refrained from using it to avoid causing any more damage, and installed Windows XP SP3 on my 80GB drive.
I have since then realized that my "fix" grants me one boot before going back to it's unbootable state. I ran a full error scan in HD Tune, which detected 4 damaged blocks (0.2%) as shown in the attached picture.
Temperature is perfectly fine and the S.M.A.R.T. info as read by HD Tune detected no issues.
My question is, Should I:
A. Use a program such as HDD Regenerator, DLGDIAG or Spinrite to fix this issue and continue using the drive
B. Use a program such as HDD Regenerator, DLGDIAG or Spinrite to fix this issue then format and reinstall Windows
C. Simply format and reinstall Windows
D. Replace the drive
E. Sacrifice a (stick of) RAM on the blood moon
F. Repair install
G. Other
I've already backed up what I needed to, but purchasing a new drive isn't really a good option for me as I really don't have the money for it right now.
Last edited by nomad6770; 08 Oct 2012 at 10:32.