Christos' Blog

Modern drives do have bad sectors; they're just good at hiding them from the host computer (by having "spare sectors" which get used to replace "bad sectors" under the covers). A clicking noise, however, sounds like more of a hardware problem.

 

The best advice is to simply replace the disk with a brand new drive. Disks are cheap, replacing data is not. The "bad" disk may still be usable - put it in an external USB case and use it for sneakernet file transfers.

 

In most cases disks die after 3 years of use, YMMV. Disks on the shelf, not powered up, age slower. Always on disks age slightly slower than disks which are cycled.

Modern drives do have bad sectors; they're just good at hiding them from the host computer (by having "spare sectors" which get used to replace "bad sectors" under the covers). A clicking noise, however, sounds like more of a hardware problem.

 

The best advice is to simply replace the disk with a brand new drive. Disks are cheap, replacing data is not. The "bad" disk may still be usable - put it in an external USB case and use it for sneakernet file transfers.

 

In most cases disks die after 3 years of use, YMMV. Disks on the shelf, not powered up, age slower. Always on disks age slightly slower than disks which are cycled.

 

Yeah, apparently the disk has stopped spinning now as well so it will probably be used in a disk throwing contest. Luckily I had all the data I needed saved so it's cool. Still it's a bit annoying having to rebuild a system without any other mass storage solution and with incompatibility between falcon and pc hard disk filesystem. Thanks for the info