Bad sector on Western Digital Caviar Black

[Punkid]

ok, my hard drive is a caviar black 1tb, (WD1001FALS) , its like less than one and a half years old ,today my coomputer started freezing momentarily, i tested the hard drive and turns out it has some bad sectors...HD tune benchmark fails, WD Diagnostics utility fails during diagnostics...: heres screenshots of HD Tune:

so how can i fix this? i did some googling, turns out that the drives controller shouldve done it automatically and transparently ....well it didnt, so what do i do?

 

[Route44]

Time for a new drive. I've been where you are now. There are times when diagnostics can fix certain sector issues, but like you I have had to get a replacement because it was beyond the drive's controller to rectify the problem.

A shame for you because the WD Caviar Blacks are some of their best.

 

[Punkid]

its sad that a caviar black gave me this problem .. anyway i tried HDD regenerator, it fixed the sector apparently, HD Tune's error scan does not show a bad sector anymore, but benchmark still fails at the same point...and the WD Lifeguard fails to complete the diagnostics too...

 

[Route44]

I would trust the latter, i.e. WD Lifeguard and benchmark, rather than the former, i.e. HDD regenerator and HD Tune. Therefore, back up everything A.S.A.P.

 

[Punkid]

i have no place to back up , hard drive is crammed full :S , and i dont wanna lose my caviar black *cries*

 

[mailpup]

This could happen to any hard drive at any time so it wouldn't hurt to have a backup strategy in any case. So if you were to buy another hard drive, you back up your data to it and then RMA your defective hard drive. When you receive the replacement, you could use the second hard drive as your backup and not have to worry about losing data thereafter.

As a side issue, the one time I received a defective hard drive, Western Digital handled the RMA flawlessly. I live in Los Angeles and the WD facility was also in southern California. I shipped it via UPS on Monday and two days later on Wednesday I received the replacement. They had to have shipped it out the same day they received the old one. Not only that but my defective unit was a WD Caviar Black 640GB HDD and they sent me a Caviar Black 1TB HDD as a replacement. Of course, I realize since you appear to live in another country your experience might not be the same but I was well pleased.

 

[Punkid]

i live in Pakistan, so its gonna be difficult to send the drive for RMA

 

[mailpup]

According to the WD website, there is a warranty center in India. Perhaps you can use that one.

 

[Punkid]

yea i checked the website, turns out my hard drive is made in malaysia so ill have to send it there...anyway, its got 5 year warranty so im in no hurry, expires at the end of 2014...

 

[mailpup]

I don't think it matters where it was made. Mine was made in Malaysia too.