SMART Errors

My 5 year old Seagate hard drive seems to be having issues.

Several programmes say the drive is bad based on the SMART results. All I can figure out from the SMART tests is that there are some bad sectors.

The Windows XP partition doesn't boot and CHKDSK says it has unrecoverable errors. The Linux partition seems to be fine.

The BIOS doesn't detect always detect the drive after a warm reboot, but seems to detect it OK after a cold reboot.

Should I be worried? Should I get a new HDD?

Thanks
Stephen.

Yes, as soon as hdd start to show such behavior buy a new one and move all your file over.

OK, I'll get a new one as soon as possible.

Any recommendations?

Only really 2 manufacturers left in the game these days. Seagate and wd. I always go with Seagate, unless it's for nas drives, then wd red.

^^^^^Exactly what Harrison said^^^^^

I bought two 1000GB Seagate drives from Novatech (model ST1000DM003).

I think I'll copy everything onto one of them, then duplicate it and keep one as a backup.

See if your motherboard supports Raid arrays. If it does you could set the drives as a Raid 1 mirrored set, then you wouldn't need to backup/duplicate from one drive to the other. Although if some files were corrupted then they would be on both mirrored drives.

Originally Posted by Harrison:
Although if some files were corrupted then they would be on both mirrored drives.

That's why I stick to manual backups using the software Vice Versa. GoodSync is even free if I remember correctly.

I also still use Vice Versa, especially for my music collection. I normally manually copy new albums to both the normal and backup locations for audio when I get them, but even doing that when I run Vice Versa I still find some differences that need correcting, so it shows manual copying still can produce errors.

Originally Posted by Harrison:
...but even doing that when I run Vice Versa I still find some differences that need correcting, so it shows manual copying still can produce errors.

With manually I meant Vice Versa ;)

I don't think there is any RAID support built in. I did consider doing some sort of RAID arrangement, but I think I'll just put everything onto one disk, and duplicate it onto another, and put it in a safe place :).

If your Motherboard doesn't have Raid support, you can buy PCI & PCIe Hard Drive controllers that do have. ;)