bad sectors on HD

[Pinkpig]

Hello all, i just ran a chkdsk on command prompt on a w2k server machine and it says that 2KB in bad sectors. So does this mean my drive will fail anytime soon? This is a seagate scsi drive in a dell poweredge machine.

Should i be concerned about this?

Thanks
Laura

 

[nanaki333]

yep. they only get worse over time.

 

[Pinkpig]

So if i did a image backup (ghost or symantec v2i protector) of the drive will i be able to put the image back if i bought a replacement for that drive? Or would the data be corrupted somewhere because of that bad sector and it wouldn't restore right?

thanks
L

 

[Lioconvoy]

Yes and no... A drive will only get worse as time goes on. However, keep in mind I had a hard drive with about 2MB of bad sectors on it, and other then those, it worked fine, and continued to work fine for 3 years after they appeared, until I just threw out the drive when I upgraded to 2 large hard drives. Keep an eye on the bad sectors, and listen to it as well. Usually, when I've had a HD fail, it warns me for a brief period of time by taking a little longer to load then usual and making extra noise. I've never personally just had a HD completely up and go with no warning, though I'm sure others have. Still, a few KB of bad sectors is nothing, really, unless you've got a 20 MB hard drive.

 

[Pinkpig]

it's a 18gig drive =) i guess that 2kb is a lot then hehe. your yes and no answer was it to my 1st question on if the drive would fail or about the backup image might be corrupted ??

THanks
L

Originally posted by: Lioconvoy
Yes and no... A drive will only get worse as time goes on. However, keep in mind I had a hard drive with about 2MB of bad sectors on it, and other then those, it worked fine, and continued to work fine for 3 years after they appeared, until I just threw out the drive when I upgraded to 2 large hard drives. Keep an eye on the bad sectors, and listen to it as well. Usually, when I've had a HD fail, it warns me for a brief period of time by taking a little longer to load then usual and making extra noise. I've never personally just had a HD completely up and go with no warning, though I'm sure others have. Still, a few KB of bad sectors is nothing, really, unless you've got a 20 MB hard drive.

 

[Calin]

No. If all the bad sectors are identified, the image process will go with no problems. The only problem could be that a bad sector could appear in a critical file (like NT loader, kernel or something).
Certainly the copied image will not be worse than the current drive's content
Calin