Should I worry about an "uncorrectable sector"?

[aimeeandbeatles]

I finally found a SMART program that will detect my drive, and it says I have 1 uncorrectable sector. Should I worry about it? Googling isn't too clear.

 

[Cutlass]

No. A hard drive is a big thing, and it's easy for there to be some bad sectors. It's no big deal.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Thank you. So what the HDD will do is tell the OS not to bother with the sector?

 

[Genocidicbunny]

The HDD controller will map it out as a bad sector. The OS wont even know that its corrupted. The controller takes care of it transparently.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Checkdisk:

Checking file system on C: The type of the file system is NTFS. A disk check has been scheduled. Windows will now check the disk. 295168 file records processed. 415 large file records processed. 0 bad file records processed. 0 EA records processed. 60 reparse records processed. Unable to locate the file name attribute of index entry cambria.ttc of index $I30 with parent 0x38347 in file 0x39ba1. Deleting index entry cambria.ttc in index $I30 of file 230215. Unable to locate the file name attribute of index entry cambriab.ttf of index $I30 with parent 0x38347 in file 0x39ba2. Deleting index entry cambriab.ttf in index $I30 of file 230215. Unable to locate the file name attribute of index entry cambriai.ttf of index $I30 with parent 0x38347 in file 0x39ba3. Deleting index entry cambriai.ttf in index $I30 of file 230215. Unable to locate the file name attribute of index entry cambriaz.ttf of index $I30 with parent 0x38347 in file 0x39ba4. Deleting index entry cambriaz.ttf in index $I30 of file 230215. 335014 index entries processed. CHKDSK is recovering lost files. Recovering orphaned file cambria.ttc (236449) into directory file 230215. Recovering orphaned file cambriab.ttf (236450) into directory file 230215. Recovering orphaned file cambriai.ttf (236451) into directory file 230215. 4 unindexed files processed. Recovering orphaned file cambriaz.ttf (236452) into directory file 230215. 295168 security descriptors processed. Cleaning up 142 unused index entries from index $SII of file 0x9. Cleaning up 142 unused index entries from index $SDH of file 0x9. Cleaning up 142 unused security descriptors. 19924 data files processed. CHKDSK is verifying Usn Journal... 37699328 USN bytes processed. Usn Journal verification completed. CHKDSK is verifying file data (stage 4 of 5)... 295152 files processed. File data verification completed. CHKDSK is verifying free space (stage 5 of 5)... 84468780 free clusters processed. Free space verification is complete. Adding 1 bad clusters to the Bad Clusters File. CHKDSK discovered free space marked as allocated in the master file table (MFT) bitmap. Correcting errors in the Volume Bitmap. Windows has made corrections to the file system. 483524336 KB total disk space. 145130488 KB in 203775 files. 103472 KB in 19925 indexes. 4 KB in bad sectors. 415256 KB in use by the system. 65536 KB occupied by the log file. 337875116 KB available on disk. 4096 bytes in each allocation unit. 120881084 total allocation units on disk. 84468779 allocation units available on disk. Internal Info: 00 81 04 00 e0 69 03 00 11 11 06 00 00 00 00 00 .....i.......... 60 51 00 00 3c 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 `Q..<........... 42 00 00 00 1f 86 c9 77 20 80 26 00 20 78 26 00 B......w .&. x&. Windows has finished checking your disk. Please wait while your computer restarts.

I wonder what the heck is going on with those TTF files.

Also, I read low-level formats can fix bad clusters. What exactly is the different between low and high-level? I think low-level is making all the bits into 0's, while high-level doesn't, it just makes them rewritable, did I get this right?

 

[Cutlass]

Really, aimee, stop worrying so much.

 

[Genocidicbunny]

Low-level formats set up the disk to be used at all, and are usually done by the factory. They actually establish the 'boundaries' on an HDD.

And seriously, stop freaking out. Bad sectors happen, and they happen often. There is a reason that the HDD controller has ways of specifically dealing with it -- its a fact of life for HDD's. They're magnetic media that is read by a mechanically actuated head. In other words, poo poo happens. Relax.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Okay, thanks. Just that since I got out of bed cos I thought the old Maxtor was going, I've been really uptight. This is what happens when you're messed up in the head.

 

[Cutlass]

So backup your files on a regular basis. Stuff happens. But you can neither predict when a HDD is going to crap out, nor can you prevent it. It's a normal part of computing. It is not something to stress over.

 

[Perfection]

How often do hard drives crap out anyways? I don't recall ever having that happen to me.

 

[Genocidicbunny]

They shouldnt very often. The MTBF is pretty high for most HDD's, Something on the order of 100,000 hours at least. So even if you leave your pc on 24/7 and it is constantly powering the HDD, on average it would still take 11.5 years to fail. There are of course some HDD's that fail before and that fail after.

Personally I've had loads of HDD's crap out on me. Seagates, WD's, Maxtors, Samsungs, Hitachi's. All of them can fail, it just doesnt happen as often as my experience makes it seem.
(I have bad luck with computer hardware anyways)

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

How often do hard drives crap out anyways? I don't recall ever having that happen to me.

I've seen a head-crashed HDD in school. The teacher had it opened up and on the desk next to a non-head-crashed one. Thats how I telled.

 

[Cutlass]

I've had a couple with problems. But never one that crapped out completely. And some were in use 5-6 years. Of course the PC is only on when I'm using it. A HDD doesn't do much if a pc is idle, but I still prefer it off.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

I thought hibernation turns the hard disks off. Then again, not all computers have hibernation.

 

[Cutlass]

If the PC is fully in hibernation, then yes the HDD should not be spinning. but I never use it.

 

[Genocidicbunny]

Hibernation turns it all off...
It simply copies the contents of the RAM to the HDD and then effectively shuts down.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

I was thinking about this battery backup thing. Because with regular ones, you have to be right there to shut it down, IIRC. So I was thinking of one -- suppose you ran to the store for 30 minutes, leaving an unsaved document up on the computer, and the power goes out. And the battery kicks in, and tells the computer to save everything to the drive and shutdown properly before the battery runs out of juice, but it's more like a hibernation sort of shutdown, so when the power comes back on, everything you were working on comes back.

Does this exist, except in laptops? Just wondering.

 

[Genocidicbunny]

I was thinking about this battery backup thing. Because with regular ones, you have to be right there to shut it down, IIRC. So I was thinking of one -- suppose you ran to the store for 30 minutes, leaving an unsaved document up on the computer, and the power goes out. And the battery kicks in, and tells the computer to save everything to the drive and shutdown properly before the battery runs out of juice, but it's more like a hibernation sort of shutdown, so when the power comes back on, everything you were working on comes back.

Does this exist, except in laptops? Just wondering.

Not like hibernation.
Hibernation si when the contents of the RAM are stored. So when you boot again, they get restored into RAM and all your programs are running again. What you're talking about it simply saving and shutting down.

 

[lndm]

WRT smart substitutions, often read errors are followed by a successful read of that block in the early stages of the fault, allowing SMART to swap it out to a fresh area of the drive.

With your unrecoverable error, since your system is working I wouldn't worry too much. There is a chance you'll stumble upon something that isn't there one day but in my experience I highly doubt you'll even notice. There is such a good chance the file is not important. It may have even been a temporary file.

The MTBF is pretty high for most HDD's, Something on the order of 100,000 hours at least.

Fair enough, Genocidicbunny, but just to clarify: MTBF is such a "statistic". 100,000 hours is twenty years switching it on and off once each day.

 

[Genocidicbunny]

It is, but considering the average life of our pc components. Even if I set it to double what my other components are expected to survive, 4 years, it is still much under the average time to failure. Now, an average comes from a data set that has extremes, and sometimes you may get those extremes, but to have it fail only after months, there has to either be a defect, or you're extremely unlucky. In fact, the probability is nearly 0 ( even my calculator cant go to such a high power of 10)