Any way to revive ailing drive?

[watercooled]

You can't rescue a failing drive, you can reallocate bad sectors, but if a drive is starting to generate bad sectors to the point you need to manually intervene, it can't really be considered reliable (although TBF, no drive should be ultimately trusted). If the bad sectors were caused by a known external factor like power failure/bad cables, then it can be worth doing though.

[flearider]

low level format .. should set it back to start if not best bet is keep it as a overflow drive and just partition off bad sectors ..

[peterb]

SATA cables (well, the connectors) are fairly flimsy. I've had a couple of cases where they crack along the narrow edge, giving system instability, freezes etc.

[AD-15]

Thanks again guys for the responses and apologies for taking my time to reply. I completely forgot to update this thread.

I did try changing out the SATA cable as suggested and it seems to have done the trick. I can now access the drive with no problem, fixed any corrupt installs etc. I ran the error check utility in Windows and it found+fixed a huge number of them.

I looked at the way the old cable was run and there are quite a few very tight bends, I guess something came loose inside over time. The new cable had had to be installed in a way that means it's fairly squeezed between the side panel and a metal part in the case, but it doesn't seem bad and there are no tight bends. When I rebuild the system in a couple of months I'll use a different and longer cable and route it properly.

Thanks guys!

[watercooled]

Great.

SATA cables usually use fairly thick solid conductors, so they're less tolerant to bending and can simply break through fatigue if bent/straightened a few times.