WD2500 issues

[stevo1210]

I have an IDE HDD here from a little old lady that lives with her son.
Basically... old ladies don't know much about computers, so she hasn't fiddled with the internals and neither has her son.
The HD is a Western Digital Caviar WD2500, 250GB HDD. I think it has bad sectors because it won't format properly... is there any way to fix this? or is the bin the only option...?

Date code on the drive is 21 June 2004... so it's about 6 years old. The computer that it was in has had little use, so I can't see why this damage has occurred...

[Dgtech]

Re: WD2500 issues

There is a good read on this site about that model:

http://datacent.com/datarecovery/hdd...digital/WD2500

Another suggestion is to download Wester Digital's drive utility/diagnostic software. This software is free and is worth trying.

[seanc]

Re: WD2500 issues

Run MHDD on it, it may be able to fix the sectors. You can also use it to read the SMART attributes.

[Scenic]

Re: WD2500 issues

There is a good read on this site about that model:

http://datacent.com/datarecovery/hdd...digital/WD2500

Another suggestion is to download Wester Digital's drive utility/diagnostic software. This software is free and is worth trying.

that site is next to useless. they basically say the same thing for all drives listed there. and those are mostly the absolute end-of-life-symptoms..

[Newbie2]

Re: WD2500 issues

There is a good read on this site about that model:

http://datacent.com/datarecovery/hdd...digital/WD2500

Another suggestion is to download Wester Digital's drive utility/diagnostic software. This software is free and is worth trying.

Websites like those give very generic explanations, and then simply substitute in the model number of the hard drive that you search.

[NxB]

Re: WD2500 issues

Try HDD regenerator after you try the wd utility. Its on the hirens CD. I've used it on 3 WD 250s and they appear fixed. I've been using 2 of them for over a year without issues.

[stevo1210]

Re: WD2500 issues

doesn't the HDD regenerator on Hiren's CD only do like a few sectors and that's it?

[NxB]

Re: WD2500 issues

Unless something has changed, it worked through all the sectors on mine. Ran for a few hours.

[kaniki]

Re: WD2500 issues

back to the main part.. you said that you dont know why it may be going bad and not a lot of use.. 2 things i would check that could prematurely kill a hard drive.. enough ram for the system and make sure that there is adequate cooling for it.. That is one thing that drive me crazy, seeing a custom built PC and people thinking that the fan in the power supply is good enough to cool the PC and all its parts. I have even hard hard drives that have gone bad because of not enough cooling.. just a thought..

[larrymoencurly]

Re: WD2500 issues

http://www.HDDguru.com forums may have information.

[dood]

Re: WD2500 issues

In my opinion, if a drive does test to have bad sectors, it's junk. You can run utilities that will remap the bad sectors over to the pool of sectors that drives keep for "spares", but the point is, the drive is failing, and should be replaced ASAP.

[kc8adu]

Re: WD2500 issues

run smartudm on the hirens cd.
look for a bunch of reallocated sectors and current pending.
speedfan also does this and links to an online database to compare your drive to others.

[stevo1210]

Re: WD2500 issues

I've always had bad luck with WD drives, but I'll give it a shot and see what happens with that Hiren's CD utility.

[seanc]

Re: WD2500 issues

Right now I'm having rubbish luck with Seagate, probably because 98% of my machines have Seagate drives in them though.

[NxB]

Re: WD2500 issues

In my opinion, if a drive does test to have bad sectors, it's junk. You can run utilities that will remap the bad sectors over to the pool of sectors that drives keep for "spares", but the point is, the drive is failing, and should be replaced ASAP.

2/3 WD drives have no issues for me. Run 24/7. The 3rd one has issues with the boot sector but works fine as storage. Also have a maxtor mac drive that I cut off the first 30gb because it was screwed up. The rest works fine. I wouldn't put irreplaceable data on it but so far no major failures.

[dood]

Re: WD2500 issues

2/3 WD drives have no issues for me. Run 24/7. The 3rd one has issues with the boot sector but works fine as storage. Also have a maxtor mac drive that I cut off the first 30gb because it was screwed up. The rest works fine. I wouldn't put irreplaceable data on it but so far no major failures.

Thats fine for use in your own systems, where you understand the risk is higher for it to fail completely. But to return it to use in a customer's PC? Never.

[NxB]

Re: WD2500 issues

If it passes hdd regenerator and then tests good?

[dood]

Re: WD2500 issues

I wouldn't, but maybe I'm more cautious. For the price of a new drive these days (under $50 for a 250gb), I will always recommend a new drive. And given the choice of a new drive over a used one that I've pulled from a working machine and tested as 100% good, most people will choose the new drive.

[severach]

Re: WD2500 issues

Bad sectors can be created by turning the drive off during write. When read it will report as bad but will not be remapped until it gets written to. Though there's nothing wrong with the drive or the sector it will be remapped instead of fixed because the drive doesn't know whether the bad sector was created from a partial write or failing media.

There's nothing wrong with a drive that creates a bad sector once in a while since it's probably PEBCAK. When they start showing up too often or overwriting the bad sector is unable to remap it then the drive is toast.

Utilities are not required to remap sectors. Any write that hits the sector will do it. Utilities help by doing the whole drive at once ensuring all sectors are tested and remapped.

A drive with a lot of remapped sectors can get slow. Writing zeros to the whole drive seems to bring the speed back up.

Zero write the bad drive then install or write your image. If the zero write is successful then all bad sectors were remapped.

Any tool that writes only zeros will work. I use WD Diagnostics for Windows to write zeros. dban can do it.

[stevo1210]

Re: WD2500 issues

I give up. tried HDD regenerator and it freezes at 31MB...