SMART says disk failure is imminent due to bad blocks, what do I need to do?

Question

I have on my hard drive 2 OSes: Ubuntu 12.04 and Windows Vista (I keep it just because of school). Everything was OK on both OSes, but one day on Ubuntu I was getting awkward noises from my notebooks' hard drive and then everything stopped and I couldn't do anything. On Windows everything was OK.

Every time I boot Ubuntu I can get 5 minutes normal run time, without problems. After that the hard drive sounds crazy and nothing works. I could run S.M.A.R.T tests from a older Ubuntu CD (10.04) from the GUI (Disk Utility, or something like that and from terminal). From the GUI, I got that the DISK FAILURE IS IMMINENT and I have ~700 bad blocks (or broken blocks, I had that test I while ago) on my HDD. From the terminal (I don't remember if it was fsck or a SMART test command) I got that the HDD will fail in under 24 hours.

Since then it passed 2-3 weeks. I've tried "badblocks" but after 10 hours it was still running and I had to stop it.

Now I have to use cygwin and other alternatives for my Linux apps on Windows. How can I separate the bad blocks from Ubuntu so it wouldn't use them? Please help.

Solution 1

BACKUP immediately. Your hard drive is failing, consider it done. Don't waste any time or your data may become unrecoverable. There is no way of compensating for that huge amount of failing sectors.

Solution 2

Also consider using Something like spinrite in case the drive does fail, I've used it in the past to recover photos off a drive that failed, don't just assume the data is lost... it may work.

Obviously no substitute for regular backups.

Comments

[nanofarad]

I can vouch for this. 700 is not low enough to shrug off, and not high enough to be an obvious false alarm.

[gertvdijk]

Ignoring SMART warnings is a very bad thing to do. If the diagnostics of the hard drive tells you it is failing, secure your data and get it replaced a.s.a.p. Warranty applies to this, if still in warranty period.

[John S Gruber]

SMART relocates blocks for you as long as it's possible. Trust it when it says the disk is failing. Back it up, buy a new disk, copy your data to the new one, and put the old one aside.

[Aquarius]

@gertvdijk the point is: you already know it is failing, but you dont care, the stuff you have there has backup already, you got no money to spare, and will try to use it till it burn up, so, the SMART warnings and boot delay caused by it is utterly annoying :)

[Albert van der Horst]

Do not fix the disk. Get an exact copy using dd, then do all fixing you want on the copy. You can even use alternative programs on. Do not worry about bad blocks. They can't be used, by definition, so it even doesn't make sense to isolate them, whatever that means.