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I don't know exactly why, but hard drive failure happens to me quite often. This time around, three out of my eight drives failed almost at the same time (two HDDs and one SSD).

I still don't know what the hell is wrong with the SSD, but CrystalDiskInfo showed the dreaded "Reallocated Sectors Count," "Current Pending Sector Count," and "Uncorrectable Sector Count" values as above threshold for both HDDs.

Sure enough, running chkdsk x: /b on one of the drives has resulted in 170 clusters being added to the Bad Clusters File. I'm scanning the other other right now (both drives are 3TB Seagates and it is taking forever).

My question is simply this: once I find and mark all the bad clusters with either chkdsk or SpinRite...what happens next? Do I happily go on using the drive, marking new clusters as they become bad? How do I find out the actual threshold for clusters that can be added to the Bad Clusters File for my drive? ...or should I just toss both (and the SSD) in the garbage right now?

I really don't understand why this is happening to me. I bought six identical 3TB drives at the same time. They have been powered on for roughly the same number of hours. They were all mostly used for storage...and yet only two out of the six developed bad clusters.

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Generally once modern spinning HDD's start to show errors, they're on the way out and should be expected to die soon.

Only exception really is if you did something specific like drop a spinning HDD, and then bad sectors show up, the cause of the bad sectors is that specific event and not the drive "going bad."

If you are running eight drives in one system, you're drawing a lot of power. Your bad luck could be caused by things like bad power supply or issues with the power reaching your system. Try replacing your system's power supply with a new one of known good brand and higher wattage, and hook this computer up to a UPS or other power conditioner. If your system is poorly ventilated or placed in a poorly ventilated area, that isn't helping.

Also, I'm sure with the advent of SSD's and fall in HDD prices they are not "making drives like they used to."

Regarding your SSD, try updating the firmware on it.

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  • As for the SSD, last time I tried to run a check on it, it just...disappeared from the Computer Management console snap-in. I reboot and it shows up in the OS again. OCZ Vertex 4. There is no new firmware on it and I can't figure out what the hell is wrong. Well, thanks anyway.
    – user270749
    Commented Nov 10, 2013 at 18:32
  • Sounds like you're doing everything right. FWIW at least drives are cheaper now.
    – LawrenceC
    Commented Nov 11, 2013 at 0:05
  • P.S. In addition to the "Update Firmware" button, the OCZ Toolbox has a "TRIM" button. According to Wikipedia, "A Trim command (commonly typeset as TRIM) allows an operating system to inform a solid-state drive (SSD) which blocks of data are no longer considered in use and can be wiped internally." It's worth a shot, methinks.
    – user270749
    Commented Nov 11, 2013 at 1:45

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