Errors question

[cesc]

Hi. I'm working on a Toshiba laptop and during reformat, it would rang at 21% forever. So, using a hard drive utility, I found out that there were errors on the disk. I decided to give it a try and write zeros to the whole drive, and then I ran the utility again. This time, it did not report a single error. My questions is: can I trust this drive now or should I go ahead and replace it anyway? Thanks.

[Steve R Jones]

What does: " it would rang" mean?

[cesc]

While reformatting, it would go from 2% to 3% in about 5 seconds, for example. The same things would happen from 3 to 4, from 4 to 5, etc. Once it reached 21%, it stayed at it for as long as I would leave the computer on. Do I make myself a little bit more clear? Thanks.

[Midknyte]

did you run a hard drive diagnostic like seatools? laptop hard drives go bad all the time.

[cesc]

That's exactly what I used. The first time, it reported 40 errors on the drive. After the zero-format, it reported no errors.

[Midknyte]

You didn't say what kind of errors you got. I probably would have replaced the drive in the first place, rather than trying a zero fill.

In any case, make sure to backup your date.

[Sterling_Aug]

I think he meant "hang".

You could buy a USB external laptop hard drive enclosure and a new laptop hard drive, then mount the old drive in the USB enclosure and use it as a back up drive for your data.

[BipolarBill]

A zero fill format automatically finds and marks any bad sectors.

If the errors were simple data errors, the zero fill eliminates them too.

As long as this drive doesn't have "sector cancer", it should be fine.