Hard drive test completed, but with read failure.

Hello everyone, for the past few days my computer has been acting very slow and the disk usage never goes over 50%. I ran a test using "GSmartControl" and it showed the results of the test as "Completed with read failure" I check another tool to be safe and the health of it shows as "Caution". I don't know what to do. I ran chkdsk from CMD and ran the scan from the C:\ disk menu. What should I do now?

Build number is (2004) 20262.1010

The very first thing that I would suggest is to backup any data that you need from that drive if it is not already backed up.

I assume that this is a laptop so you may not have a lot of options like reseating cables and such, so the next step would likely be to replace that drive. I don't think that I would trust it any longer.

hsehestedt said:

The very first thing that I would suggest is to backup any data that you need from that drive if it is not already backed up.

I assume that this is a laptop so you may not have a lot of options like reseating cables and such, so the next step would likely be to replace that drive. I don't think that I would trust it any longer.

I’ve been backing up to an external drive. I don’t know when it will fail. Hopefully not until my replacement drive comes.

Noah W said:

What should I do now?

Build number is (2004) 20262.1010

Replace the hard drive that is apparently failing.

NavyLCDR said:

Replace the hard drive that is apparently failing.

I’ve bought a replacement hard drive for it.

Bastet said:

Image the drive using Macrium (create their boot media), exchange problem drive for new one then restore the image.
You could clone the drive too but I’ve heard this will copy any bad blocks too. (Can anyone confirm or dispute this?)

I don’t know either.

Bastet said:

Image the drive using Macrium (create their boot media), exchange problem drive for new one then restore the image.
You could clone the drive too but I’ve heard this will copy any bad blocks too. (Can anyone confirm or dispute this?)

I've cloned drives a few times.

In all cases, I'm pretty sure that only the data were copied. Making a literal image of a disc would take much longer than just the data from a partially filled disc.

The drive may be able to be cloned.
If it's cloned it may prompt to skip sectors.
After a clone restoration run these chkdsk switches overnight: Chkdsk /b /v

Not sure how Macrium handles it, but from experience with other disk imaging products, they will typically fail or show an error if bad sectors are encountered. There may be an option then to ignore bad sectors that will at least allow you to complete the image. It should then log the names of any files that include those bad sectors. That will allow you to address those files after you perform a restore, for example, by restoring those specific files from a previous backup, re-downloading them, etc.