Is my HDD dead? Vaio VPCF12S1E

[j9ffy1]

Hi, my Vaio VPCF12S1E failed to boot, and recovery options all failed.

I managed to save the bulk of my personal data to an external drive using Parted Magic.

I then recovered the system to factory settings and was able to run Vaio Care diagnostics which highlighted a drive error and suggested running CHKDSK.

I ahve been running CHKDSK in r mode. It replaced seven bad clusters in stage 4 and is now running stage 5 very slowly (about 4 hours so far and approx 1600000 of 113 mio free clusters processed).

My questions are:

1. Is this rate for chkdsk unusual?

2. Anything else I should be trying?

3. Does this look like a HDD replacement is in order, and, if so, can I mirror the recovery partition of my existing drive to a new drive?

Any suggestions very much appreciated! thanks and regards, j.

[Blencogo]

Hi j9ffy1 and welcome.

I would just let it run and wait to see the final report.  If it reports further problems, you must decide if you can trust the drive in the future.  In theory it should be OK.

Stage 5 can take quite some time on a large hard drive (it is surface checking the unused free space).

If you have recovered to factory settings, make a couple of sets of Recovery Discs using Vaio Care.  If you decide to replace the drive then use these recovery discs and they will replace the Recovery Partition on your new drive.

[j9ffy1]

Hi Blencogo - thanks very much for you help.  Just one concern is the rate of free space checking... at the current rate it would take another 12 days to complete!! :smileygrin: Any idea of how long it would be reasonable to allow it to run before giving-up?  Also, do you have any idea if there is a manufacturer's disk checker for this HDD, and, if so, whether it's worth giving that a whirl? 

Thanks again, J.