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Installing Windows on a hard drive with unstable sectors.

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My laptop lags with 100% disk activity on System, and hd tune found 8 unstable sectors.

I still haven't tested where the sectors are located.

The hard drive is 500gb.

 

Let's assume 4 sectors are in the first 100gb and other 4 sectors are in the last 100gb.

If i reinstall windows, and create 3 partitions, first 100gb, 2nd 300gb, 3rd 100gb and decide to install windows on the 300gb, will those 300gbs be definitely without the bad sectors?

 

I know the best way is to have my important data back up, and I know that at this state the hard drive cannot be trusted but I have no money now so I have to try stuff like this.

 

How do I proceed? Will my plan up there work?

Should I try HDD regenerator before I reinstall Windows?

 

Sorry if this is not the appropriate sub forum but since my main question is about installing Windows I decided to post here.

Hi uchkur,

Sorry to hear about the hard drive issues you may be experiencing.

Conventional wisdom would be to replace the hard drive, but despite being very inexpensive these days, if you have no money that is not a suggestion that you can implement. :(

 

Current prices in the Uk for a 500Gb SATA drive are around GBP £30 and about GBP £20 for slightly smaller capacity drives ( that would equate to around USD $40 and USD $27  at current GBP/USD exchange rates (however when I have purchased computer equipment and spares from the USA I have found them substantially cheaper than those available in the UK…and of course there are also well known Internet Auction sites!

 

I would advise you to think most carefully before embarking on a fresh installation of Windows and there is no guarantee that partitioning in the way you suggest would achieve the result you desire.

 

All may not be lost with your existing set up…the fact that hd tune found a few unstable sectors need not mean that your drive is going to fail immediately….although a fair few technicians would regard it as possibly indicative of a precursor to future trouble.

 

Usually the unstable sectors have not yet been re-mapped to exclude them from writing/read duties, but if read write issues crop up in the future may well do so.

 

I would be inclined to follow the following steps:

 

1 Check your back ups and system images, for reproduction ( verify if possible) make sure they include everything that's important to you. including a full Registry back up) and any stuff you don't want to lose. Make sure that you have at least 3 copies of everthing with one kept safely offsite on removable media. Don't forget to look out your installations discs ( executables), product serial keys, including those for Windows itself, and that your ethernet and wifi drivers are all safely to hand on removable media.

 

2 Try to repair your operating system, start with running a disc check with something like Seatools and download your hard drive manufacturers disc repair utility and run both the short and long tests. If those tools can repair the issues then all well and good but often hard drive issues start small and do tend to escalate over time… so start saving for a new drive.

 

3 It's worth while running sfc /scannow ( from an elevated command prompt) to have Windows check for damaged or missing protected system files

 

4 It's also worthwhile considering running your on board anti virus product and a good on demand scanner especially if you have been using risky procedures (torrents for example)

 

Don't try anything before you check your back ups…. disc repair utilities can stress a hard drive and you don't want to "push it over the edge" before you are 100% happy with your back ups.

Good luck

Regards

paws

to be honest i don't think the unstable sectors are the issue with 100% disk activity but could be, so after following paws advice and also maybe running a chkdsk /r on the drive if you still have 100% disk activity then i'd look more into finding out what process may be the cause using task manager.

 

what version of windows are you using and also how much free drive space do you have?

Thanks for your replies, guys.

After reinstalling Windows the way I planned, now I have 16 unstable sectors :(

But laptop has been running fine for the past week.

I'm currently saving for an SSD and an external disk because I know the drive will eventually fail.

Just my 2 cent opinion… but seeing as how a 500 gb hard drive is $35 to $40, and a 500 gb ssd is a few hundred… I'd save for the hard drive. :popcorn:

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