Hard Drive Bad Blocks

[REVENGE]

It turns out one of my HDDs has a couple of bad blocks. I ran a program called HDD Regenerator on the problem area, but now I've ended up with the same blocks that aren't "bad", but have really long read / write times (>500ms).

Then I ran a long drive self-test using SeaTools, which failed and SMART subsequently tripped, causing constant "Your drive will fail imminently" errors in Windows. Running SeaTools for DOS doesn't help because it won't mark the problem blocks for reallocation since they technically aren't "bad blocks" anymore.

So, is there anyway I can reset the SMART error and/or get the problem blocks remapped as if they were bad blocks?

[lurker]

Any particular reason not to blow $50 on a new drive before it eats any of your data?

[Forboding Angel]

Yar, that drives days are numbered, and it would prolly be a really good idea to use it as little as possible till you can get a new one and offload the data.

I assume from seatools that it is a seagate. Prolly would be a good idea to get a Wester Digital (they really are kick ass drives) or possibly hitachi. Try to stay away from the more obscure hdd manufacturers (yes I know seagate has been around forever, but that doesn't mean that their stuff is the bees knees ).

[Neddie]

Hitachi is definitely the most reliable of the big names.

[REVENGE]

Oh, I actually discovered this problem when I was copying all the data over to a new external that I bought. No data is currently on the old drive at the moment, and the data loss was negligible, so I count myself lucky in that respect.

The new drive is a Hitachi, btw, inside a SimpleTech [re]drive. The old drive was bought as a Buffalo DriveStation, which just outlived its one year warranty.

[danuker]

Designed to be as cheap as possible to manufacture, yet last for the warranty period.
Capitalism at its finest.

[Forboding Angel]

Hitachi is definitely the most reliable of the big names.

Ehh, imo they are #2 behind WD. If you remember they had those drives using ceramic platters years back, god those things were total fail. I haven't bought anything except WD since that little debacle.

WD generally has 5 yr warranties on their drives and iirc hitachi has much of the same. Long story short, go with either of those two and you're probably in pretty good hands.

Nothing wrong with capitalism, if you buy a cheap product, you know it. Cheap products generally don't last particularly long, so the only one to blame is yourself, not capitalism. Be happy that you still have the right to choose.

[Neddie]

My worst luck has always been with WD.