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We are digital librarians. Among us are represented the various reasons to keep data -- legal requirements, competitive requirements, uncertainty of permanence of cloud services, distaste for transmitting your data externally (e.g. government or corporate espionage), cultural and familial archivists, internet collapse preppers, and people who do it themselves so they're sure it's done right. Everyone has their reasons for curating the data they have decided to keep (either forever or For A Damn Long Time (tm) ). Along the way we have sought out like-minded individuals to exchange strategies, war stories, and cautionary tales of failures.

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Is it possible to fix a portable external hard drive disk with a current pending sector count between 1 and 7? (alien.top)

submitted 2 years ago by Serkenobi@alien.top to c/datahoarder@selfhosted.forum

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Hi.

I have several portables externals hard drives to save important information and data. I was using it without any problem... Until yesterday. Suddenly, one of them was unabled to read, warning the computer to format it.

Because of that, i have used the Crystal Disk Info to check all my portables externals hard drives and i have discovered one more damage.

Both have issues with the current pending sector count. In the first case, the hard drive has seven current pending sector count:

First hard drive disk

Surprisingly, this portable external hard drive disk is still operating and the computer can read it, with a higher current pending sector count than the external hard drive disk that is unable to read by the computer.

Second hard drive disk

The portable external hard drive disk that isn't working in this moment, has a low number of current pending sector count than the first hard drive. So i was wondering... Is it possible to repair those current pending sector count? Because if a hard drive disk is working with seven... Why other with only one no?

So, with a a current pending sector count between 1 and 7, is it possible to repair the hard drives disks? In that case, how?

Thanks in advance!

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[–] HarryMuscle@alien.top 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

No, there is no such thing as fixing bad sectors.

[–] Serkenobi@alien.top 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Not even formating the hard drive disk (after copy the whole information to another device)?

[–] HarryMuscle@alien.top 2 points 2 years ago

Nope, bad sectors are physically damaged, nothing you do in software will fix them.

[–] NaibofTabr 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

SpinRite is probably your best bet for recovery.

This might help you recover the information, but the drive is toast. Get whatever you can off of it and then replace it.

Modern hard drives have some extra sectors that are hidden, and used to replace active sectors as they go bad (built-in redundancy). Once your drive starts reporting more than one or two bad sectors, it's done. The survivability is gone. Rescue the data as soon as possible and then trash the drive (e-waste recycling, preferably).