SMART Event on RAID

I have a second hard drive on my HP DV7 laptop. It's a 750GB Hitachi.

Last week I started getting a SMART event and it would ask if I wanted to check the disk. Now every time I start the computer, it's running chkdsk and found a bunch of bad clusters. Also Some of my directories are missing, yet the space available remains the same, so its not deleting the directories and freeing up the space.

I'm recovering the data tonight but I have a few questions:

1) My data recovery software has the option to skip bad directories. Should I do this? And if I do not skip this, will this simply transfer the errors to the hard drive that I'm recovering to.

2) If I clean and then reformat, will the disk be usable? Or should I just junk it and get a new one.

3) Will chkdsk fix it? Or should I reformat?

Thanks for your time and attention and help!

Jim

If chkdsk comes up with errors frequently, then something is causing errors frequently.
Most common is a hard drive failure - so run this free diagnostic: Hard Drive Diagnostic Procedure

1) Recovering bad sectors will recover the contents of the bad sectors to your transfer drive - it will not make the sectors bad.
Depending on the size of the bad directories, they may take up quite a bit of room. But the alternative is not having the data contained in them.

2) The disk may be reusable - but I'd rather rely on the results of the diagnostic tests I mentioned above. Sometimes the diagnostic tests will make repairs. I don't like this (as the repairs don't usually last that long) and usually suggest a new hard drive for any errors found by the diagnostics. If you choose to use the repair feature, just remember that the errors can pop back up at any time - so be prepared to do it all over again.

3) If chkdsk runs at boot every time and hasn't permanently fixed it yet - I doubt that running it again will help.

Thanks for your reply. That answers my question.

My main concern was transferring the disk error to my external hard drive when I clone the drive.

Thanks
Jim

One final question. When my computer starts up I have recovery and maintenance options. One of these is to "reset disk to non-RAID."

It's not an SSD, simply a second hard drive. Is RAID preferable?

Thanks,

Jim

Just FYI - I don't like RAID. I tried it with a hardware RAID card and 4 10,000 rpm Velociraptor drives when Win7 first came out.
I had constant problems and it kept telling me that I had a bad hard drive.
I finally gave up, reset the the disks to non-RAID and have been happy ever since.

Be aware that resetting the disks to non-RAID will likely involve you having to reinstall Windows.
It will delete everything on the hard drives - so backup your important data also.

Thanks for the reply. Oddly enough disk 0, my c: is not RAID.

Will it restore my c: as well?

For some reason unknown to us mere mortals, some of the OEM's decided to use RAID on individual drives.
I'm not a RAID expert, but from what I know - breaking a RAID array will only affect those drives involved in the array.
But, as always, be sure to backup your stuff "just in case".

If for some reason the Disk comes up with too many errors for those utilities to fix, you can use Vivard Smart Remap and it will repair the drive regardless of now many errors there are- It's on the Dos Utilities for Hard Drive on Hiren's Boot CD.

That is my only reservation for running RAID arrays - Especially JBOD arrays, if one drive goes bad its an instant data loss unless you can repair the drive. To do that you have to treat it like a single disk, and run the external drive scanner. Some RAID hardware comes with utilities that can scan and repair the array from within the array, even allowing you to replace a bad drive if need be - But it has been a while since I had to use any of those, I don't remember if it was Promise, Via or something else, there was a utility that ran on the OS which fixed my drives. If this is a Smart error, you would need to see what it indicates, and then run that software from within the OS if you can.

Also, lately I have been using those SiL dual SATA PCI cards, which run as RAID even if you only attach one drive. The Disk shows up on the Controller Firmware, but as far as the OS is concerned, if's just a single drive.

You should just use Acronis or other Partition Copy program and move your System partition to a good drive.