Hard drive bad sectors

[UnWarierMage224]

Hi folks,

Steps taken:

I ran CHKDSK and it came up with 4KB in bad sectors.
Ran CHKDSK/R and it couldn't fix those sectors.
Downloaded WD Diagnostics tool (My hard drive is a Samsung but apparently this WD Diags tool can diagnose hard drives other than Western Digital)... Ran a full test. It claims it fixed the error.
Ran CHKDSK again and it still came up with the 4KB in bad sectors.
Ran a SMART test using DiskCheckup utility. All SMART tests passed.
Re-ran SMART in WD Diags. Passed.
Attempted to run diagnostics through BIOS. The BIOS diagnostics choked at a point giving me an error code and series of beeps which I can't recall at the moment.

Current sysconfig:

Dell Inspiron 6400 Laptop
1.8 Ghz Intel Centrino processor (dualcore)
1.0 GB Ram
120 GB Samsung HJ120 (?) HDD.. I think it's SATA.
128MB ATI Mobility Radeon X1300 graphics card.

I read somewhere that having bad sectors on the drive will start breeding more bad sectors. Also, occasionally while the comp is running idle I'll hear a staccato grinding noise. The noise is sporadic and occurs rather infrequently.

Am I going to have to replace my HDD? And if I do have to replace it, do I have to get the exact same make/model HDD or can I just pop in another one as long as its a SATA drive?

Help's appreciated.

-'Mage

 

[Nodsu]

Even though WD diagnostics "fixed" the bad block (remapped it more likely), Windows has no way of knowing that. It marked the block bad in the NTFS metadata and that's how it is going to be.

With Windows XP, the only thing you can do is to hack into NTFS and clear the bad sectors file manually (or, just reformat). In Vista, you can tell chkdsk to recheck all clusters marked as bad.

You should keep an eye on that disk and run full surface scans at least weekly for a couple of months.

 

[AlbertLionheart]

In my experience, the bad sector count and the grinding noise show the drive is dying. Don't wait for it to do this - back up now and organise a replacement drive as soon as possible.

 

[UnWarierMage224]

OK, so I will go and order another drive ASAP.

A question, however:

The drive I have is a SATA drive. If I get another SATA drive that is the same dimensions as my current drive, will that work with my laptop? Or should I get the exact same make and model of hard drive?

-'Mage

 

[Samstoned]

does not have to be same make ,model drive
does not have to be the same size IE: 80gb to 100gb
I would keep it the same sata type
its a sata I or a II keep it that way
what you may need to do see get that new drive soon as you can its easier to image drive while its still working the way it is
I use seagate utilities to do my cloning
but the others , WD and what not ,do the same job