500GB Barracuda wont defrag and has bad sectors

[jetfire]

just ran the seatools test and it fails all of them and says to install a firmware update and the last time i tried that i killed my hdd.

i think my hdd is one of these.

http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=16937

is there any point trying to save this hdd or should i save what i can and buy a new one?

i only use this PC for the Internet and its been a bit slower starting up for a while but still works fine apart from not being able to defrag the hdd and bad sectors.

[ehhhhhhh]

just ran the seatools test and it fails all of them and says to install a firmware update and the last time i tried that i killed my hdd.

i think my hdd is one of these.

http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=16937

is there any point trying to save this hdd or should i save what i can and buy a new one?

i only use this PC for the Internet and its been a bit slower starting up for a while but still works fine apart from not being able to defrag the hdd and bad sectors.

I always get rid of dodgy HDDs imediately which developed bad sectors...it's one of the most important parts of the PC...also, bad sectors mean crippled (system)files time to time, slow speed, unreliability and many many other issues..I advise to save your stuff and get an other drive

[peterb]

Certainly get off what you can while you can. What you do afterwards... well if you want to experiment and see if the latest firmware update will fix the problem (the article you linked to stated that there may be a later release) then (if it does) run seatools again to see what it reports.

If it all looks good, then fine, carry on and use it (in non critical applications though) If not, then you haven't lost any data, and large hard drives are not that expensive in real terms, although the barracuda was positioned at the top end of the market, so it is irritating.

How old is the drive, and what is the warranty on it?

[jetfire]

just ran chkdsc for 5 hours and its fixed some things but there was 64kb of bad sectors.

still failed the sea tools tests and i still cant defrag the hdd, time to abandon ship me thinks.

i checked the Warranty on the seagate site and it expires on 15-Mar-2013 so looks like I'm covered as long as it dont cost more than the hdd in postage to send it back.

where does it need to be sent?

[joel_spencer]

If it's within the first year you bought it send it back to whoever you purchased it form, if not then you probably have to raise a claim with Seagate and they will approve/deny it then they will give you the address to send it to.

Just sending it to any address you find will at best result in a back to sender and at worse a lost drive and no replacement. Also try and recover all the data you want off it as soon as possible, as drives can go from operational to dead very quickly.

[jetfire]

i got the hdd from scan with a few other things on the 14 jul 2008 should i send it to them or seagate?

i take it seagate is outside the EU so anything i get back ill have to pay import duty on.?

[joel_spencer]

Use the UK site:

http://www.seagate.com/www/en-gb/sup...rns_assistance

They'll need the faulty error code that Seatools produces by the looks of it

Then after you've filled in all the boxes they should give you a UK address to send it to, or possibly do a pickup but unlikely on a small item like a hard drive.

As for whether you should send it to scan, you can certainly check but most retailers ask that you take up the warranty directly with the manufacturer after the first year so unless SCAN is near enough for you to physically drop the harddrive in to and save the postage then I would just send it to SCAN as they will have to send it to Seagate anyway.