Hard drive error question

[btcomm1]

My windows stopped booting. I ran seatools on the seagate hard drive, it went through the long scan and found 1 error. Would it be safe to try to fix the error and then reinstall windows or am I asking for my windows to crash again? Is 1 error enough to justify replacing the drive?

 

[daveybrat]

Yes, you should definitely fix the bad sector. I've done it many times with Seatools. If windows doesn't boot after fixing the sector, then run a checkdisk on the drive from the command prompt. You shouldn't have to reload windows.

Let us know how it goes.

 

[btcomm1]

I'm sure you can fix the error, but is that not the sign of a hd going bad? I once fixed a bunch of errors on a drive, ran another full test and it came back good. Reinstalled windows, started failing during that, checked it again and the hd showed up with errors again. Is 1 error ok or could that mean the same thing is going to happen again? is it very likely or is likely that with just 1 error detected windows might not be able to boot again?

 

[jackschmittusa]

Hard to tell if you have an anomaly or a trend with a single instance. All you can do is try.

 

[cubby1223]

Hard drives are cheap. Data is valuable. I have in the past let some things slide by with people's drives, where it looks like there's a read error, but it's not after a format. Sure enough a year or two the drives always worsen and demand replacement. I now recommend and replace drives with even the slightest of indications.

It's just not worth it. One error is too many. Especially with what you're seeing, replace the drive. Usually a bad sector just affects one file. About a month ago I was checking out someone's computer, a bad sector developed where the MFT was located. Not good.

 

[Laputa]

Yup, you should replace the drive. Unless you want to push it to it's limit until it fails; then I have no question about that:B

 

[RebateMonger]

n.m.