Chkdsk says "bad sectors". Do I need to replace my hard drive?

[nbs2014]

Chkdsk says "bad sectors". Do I need to replace my hard drive?

Here is the log from Chkdsk. Would someone be kind enough to read it and let me know your thoughts? I had problems with my touchpad and cursor behaving erratically on my Dell Inspiron 1440 laptop and it was suggested that I run Chkdsk to see if it's a hard drive failing. I put a piece of screen saver over the touchpad to see if that would help and changed the settings to default. It helped somewhat, but I bought a mouse and that seems to be working fine. Just have to get used to using it. In the meantime, I'm worried about the hard drive now and whether I need to replace it. Any help will be greatly appreciated. I'm new to this forum.

EventData
Checking file system on C: The type of the file system is NTFS. Volume label is OS. A disk check has been scheduled. Windows will now check the disk. CHKDSK is verifying files (stage 1 of 5)... 354304 file records processed. File verification completed. 1533 large file records processed. 0 bad file records processed. 4 EA records processed. 45 reparse records processed. CHKDSK is verifying indexes (stage 2 of 5)... 432480 index entries processed. Index verification completed. 0 unindexed files scanned. 0 unindexed files recovered. CHKDSK is verifying security descriptors (stage 3 of 5)... 354304 file SDs/SIDs processed. Cleaning up 28 unused index entries from index $SII of file 0x9. Cleaning up 28 unused index entries from index $SDH of file 0x9. Cleaning up 28 unused security descriptors. Security descriptor verification completed. 39089 data files processed. CHKDSK is verifying Usn Journal... 35945480 USN bytes processed. Usn Journal verification completed. CHKDSK is verifying file data (stage 4 of 5)... Read failure with status 0xc0000185 at offset 0xdcf684000 for 0x10000 bytes. Read failure with status 0xc0000185 at offset 0xdcf688000 for 0x1000 bytes. Read failure with status 0xc0000185 at offset 0xdcf739000 for 0x10000 bytes. Read failure with status 0xc0000185 at offset 0xdcf748000 for 0x1000 bytes. Windows replaced bad clusters in file 115391 of name \Users\Nancy\Pictures\EBAYIT~1\ITEMST~1\172.JPG. 354288 files processed. File data verification completed. CHKDSK is verifying free space (stage 5 of 5)... 60840369 free clusters processed. Free space verification is complete. Adding 2 bad clusters to the Bad Clusters File. Correcting errors in the Volume Bitmap. Windows has made corrections to the file system. 479275007 KB total disk space. 235246480 KB in 311980 files. 192924 KB in 39090 indexes. 8 KB in bad sectors. 474115 KB in use by the system. 65536 KB occupied by the log file. 243361480 KB available on disk. 4096 bytes in each allocation unit. 119818751 total allocation units on disk. 60840370 allocation units available on disk. Internal Info: 00 68 05 00 68 5b 05 00 dd fe 09 00 00 00 00 00 .h..h[.......... 34 1e 01 00 2d 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 4...-........... 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ Windows has finished checking your disk. Please wait while your computer restarts.

 

[ignatzatsonic]

Looks to me like a couple of bad sectors were found and replaced.

I'd look at the SMART details on the drive periodically and keep an eye on the "reallocated sectors count". If that starts to rise significantly, I'd probably replace the drive, but otherwise I'd probably keep using it.

You should of course have the data backed up regardless.

You can track the SMART details with the drive manufacturer's downloadable disk analysis tool.

 

[nbs2014]

Thank you for your advice. I will do a back up and check for the manufacturer's downloadable disk analysis tool. What are the "smart details?" Sorry I don't understand that term. Thanks again.

 

[ignatzatsonic]

S.M.A.R.T. - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Above is a detailed explanation. It's an abbreviation.

It provides a couple of dozen pieces of info about the drive. It's a partially successful attempt at providing useful info about hard drive health.

Unfortunately, it's much more cryptic than it should be.

You can view the SMART info with the drive manufacturer's analysis tool.

Some of the details will make sense--power on hours, start/stop count, etc. But most of them will leave you scratching your head--thus "cryptic".

Re-allocated sectors count on my hard drive right now shows as 0 in the RAW column. That means I have zero re-allocated sectors. Your drive presumably will show some number above 0 in the RAW column for re-allocated sector count.

I'd look at it monthly or so, looking for increases.

All hard drives ship with a bunch of unused good sectors, which are used ONLY when the drive develops bad sectors---the good sectors are brought in for use and the bad sectors are marked as not to be used. So you are dipping into your spares now.

I don't know how many spares your drive shipped with, but it's a finite supply. So you need to be watchful. Failing drives will often develop a lot of bad sectors in short order, in which case you'd replace it. In the meantime, watch that re-allocated sector count number.

The analysis tool will quickly give you a SMART report.