Vista - Hard disk warning - high reallocated sectors count!

Hi

There seems to be a problem with my hard drive, it has a high number of reallocated sectors and im not sure why, as its a brand new hard disk.


Does anyone know what i can do about this or why its happening?


Heres what the problem is about:
"Count of reallocated sectors. When the hard drive finds a read/write/verification error, it marks this sector as "reallocated" and transfers data to a special reserved area (spare area)."


Thanks

I'd suggest backing up any data on that drive and then taking it back, if it's under warranty.

The magnetic surface of a HDD is never perfect. Neither are the actuators and head mechanisms. Over time, things get worse and the ability of a HDD to faithfully regurgitate information stored at any given location will be reduced. In other words, you write the sequence 1234567890 in one particular place, and when you read back from the same place you get 123X5AA89T.

When the HDD internally detects such an "unreliable" point on its surface, it tries to remap to an alternate location so that the suspect sectors are not used again. When that starts happening more and more frequently, it's usually a good indicator of impending outright failure.

The warning you've quoted sounds like a SMART error status. It shouldn't be happening on a brand new drive. If it was mine, I'd take it back and ask for a refund or replacement.

Run chkdsk on the drive to see how many errors it has.
Monitor the HD for the next week and if it continues to happen do as H2S04 suggested.
Was the HD delivered by post? If so it may have been dropped or badly handled.

I did run chkdisk on it for ages but no errors were found. Although DiskInfo gives a warning about the reallocated sectors.

But im certain its not right as it keeps making the scraping noise, and completely froze my pc at one point and i had to restart.

If your getting that sound then that means take it back!!!!!
Its of my opinion that ether the discs inside have come loose or there is a fault with the reading arm
I have i drive that makes these sounds and at the 1st opportunity i bought my self a new one as not to risk any loss of data....
I say hurry run out and get a replacement