Is my Hard Disk Drive dying? Disk bad block errors and warnings!

Many thanks @Ghot
I checked my Disk Management.
So, out of the 1.8TB hard drive I have used only 149.32GB of storage in total.

Disk status would show as Healthy here. However, Event Viewer will still be flooded with "The file system structure on volume C: has now been repaired." and then finally "Too many repair events have occurred in a short period of time.
Temporarily suspending posting of further repair events."

I also heard that if I upgrade to SSD it would be wise to convert my Windows 10 media installation USB from MBR to GPT? I guess I'll also have to do that. I have backed up media to my other computers and documents.

Despite those errors showing up. My computer doesn't seem to crash yet. I cannot understand how these errors can suddenly get triggered from yesterday night out of nowhere but before that I never had any of those in the past 9 years.

I know I can build a new computer. But I'm happy to use this for now. I even upgraded in November 2023 and bought 1 extra identical 8GB DDR3 RAM and upgraded to 16GB RAM in dual channel mode and all working perfect.

This is a totally new experience for me and I certainly wasn't prepared for a fresh reinstall of Windows. But if this is only the Hard Disk that is giving me those errors, I guess it's not too big of a disaster. Would've been worse if it was the GPU or CPU and for that I would've definitely had no choice but to upgrade to a new PC.

I have 6 x SATA3 6.0 Gb/s Connectors in my motherboard. I'm willing to buy a 2.5" SSD and test. That way I'll know if this will be successful.

My power supply is an EVGA 750W 80 PLUS GOLD ATX12V. This has only 3 SATA ports. So obviously, I can't connect 6 hard drives to the motherboard, but I won't need to anyway.

Hello, yes when I go there this shows.
I see this number. But I'm ignorant in this area. What is this shrink volume for?

Is there a purpose of this when I'm looking to dispose off this hard drive and replace with a new SSD?

Also, regarding media creation. I know I can create ISO to GPT. But what about existing media installation that is MBR. How can this be converted to GPT?

I downloaded the Windows 10 Media Installation USB file a few years ago when I was on 1903. When I open my USB drive and check the partition style it shows MBR.

Rufus does not seem to allow me to convert this installation media to GPT?

I understand my motherboard supports UEFI. Does this mean I can simply change my motherboard Secure Boot option to UEFI and then this media will install as GPT?

Or does this media have to actually physically be a GPT file? I'm really confused as this USB media is being shown as a FAT32 system file and I'm guessing that if I were to try to install this it will default install as an MBR again.

I mean, I guess it wouldn't be too big of a deal if my SSD is under 2TB. But I still wanted to install Windows 10 in UEFI, which I have never done since having this motherboard from 2015.

If you shrink the size by 1627819 the final C-Partition size will be 279329 MB = 272 GB That is more than enough
So you just click on "Shrink"

I would shrink to 280 GB. That means enter 1620428 in the highlighted blue field

But when you plan a new SSD disk of 512 GB you better prepare/convert it to GPT before you start the installation.
Your USB contains the bootmgr.efi which is needed to boot the USB in UEFI-Mode. Download a new MCT ISO! Do not use the Version 1903!!!!

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See my disk-layout in post #13
That was prepared by a similar diskpart script as the attached for a 150 GB C-Partition.
copy the file to (C:) and run cmd (admin) when the disk is attached

C:\Windows\System32>DiskPart /s C:\disk2.txt

and after 10 seconds the disk is ready for an EFI installation. That is blazing speed!

After you run the script, open Diskmanagement and see the result!

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When you are ready with all that, shutdown, boot into BIOS, switch to UEFI and boot from your USB.
In the setup select the disk 1 and the 150 GB Windows-Partition and the Setup will do the rest

But why do I have to shrink the partition drive to 272 or 280GB?

Normally I just reformat the hard drive during the installation of fresh windows and partition and it allows me to install from scratch. Like this. https://softkeys.uk/cdn/shop/article...dows-10-13.png I just wipe the hard drive and partitions. That's all I know from my previous installations of Windows all these years.

But if I buy new SSD disk you're saying this drive needs to be manually converted to GPT first? I thought that I only need to set motherboard BIOS settings to UEFI first and then only the ISO media needs to be converted to GPT?

Or does my USB Media Installation is already ready for UEFI as it contains the bootmgr.efi ?

When I downloaded Windows 10 I didn't download it as an ISO. I followed this guide Create a Windows 10 Bootable USB Flash Drive With Windows 10 Media Creation Tool - MajorGeeks
The Windows 10 Media Creation Tool created this USB Windows 10 media installation.

Does that mean creating USB Media file in this method will install Windows 10 in either UEFI or MBR? I want to keep 1903 handy as backup just in case I need to use it for test purpose.

I used to have problems with BSOD crashing when I used 1909 and 2004 before a couple of years ago and when I freshly reinstalled 1903 never had any problems. So, I'm worried about latest Windows causing crash, which is why I want to keep 1903 handy in case I need it.

I don't have SSD yet. I need to buy it first before I wipe out my existing hard drive! Actually, I think if I only remove my old hard drive and install new SSD and then freshly install Windows 10 on it that will be enough.

Whatever is happening to your current disk, did you discover it going to Event Viewer? Did you notice some other symptom or error before and then you went to Event Viewer? Which was that symptom or error? It can give a lot of info!! A lot more than 100 whole Event Viewers together. Relevant info I mean.

A "Current Pending Sector Count" different from zero means "Caution", yes. But, my between 11 and 20 years old HDDs could have had hundreds of those "Cautions" (likely thousands no, it would have needed a lot more years) as I've never proactively watched my disks. I use backups although I have never lost a drive (excepting one accidentally dropped to the floor). So I don't have experience with SMART numbers or what can be expected from a drive that has that "warning". According to What does "Current Pending Sector Count" in S.M.A.R.T. information mean? | QNAP (IN) If this value increases over time [...] you should replace the disk drive. According to several pages, "unstable sectors" (called so in several pages) could be eventually get reallocated (to spare sectors that drives use to have) and increase "Reallocated Sectors count" that is a more severe warning ( Reallocated Sector Count: What It Is and Why It Matters ).



These are my disks (my system, btw, is quite similar, with an FX8350 and a 970 motherboard; fwiw if you ever need more than 3 SATA drives with your current PSU, get splitters, they're cheap and safe for low power devices like drives). The "Disco 0" is a 240GB SSD used only for Windows and programs, it has about 70GB of data. "Disco 1" is a 1TB HDD with two partitions, a small one with documents, drivers, app installers etc and a large one for the image backups of "Disco 0". I backup D: as files to two pendrives and E: images to rotating pendrives.

One option you might consider is buying a smaller SSD, for Windows and programs that don't require a lot of disk to speed up booting, or for everything if you don't foresee having a lot more than 150 GB. A 500 GB or so SSD would fit there quite well: it's good to not use a lot from an SSD's capacity (with HDDs this doesn't matter except Windows free space needs) and that size is quite effective in price (lower sizes, not so much). The 2 TB HDD is yet to be truly diagnosed imo, with chkdsk, format with rewrite, or other app that someone happens to know, but with the SSD you'd get the speed, safety, and freedom to format/diagnose the 2TB drive properly, which afterwards you could sell, reuse or trash.

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My SSD above is MBR. GPT has advantages like more than 4 partitions possible and possibly increased security, but I preferred known ground. Increased security (against malware and such) is what you would get from changing your boot mode to UEFI or UEFI Secure Boot. But imo home users don't need this and a repair, drive substitution etc is more complicated because the "security system" reacts against some typical repair actions that could also be intruder actions to steal info, install malware etc.

@JLArranz I seemed to have partially fixed some problems with the drive errors in Event Viewer, but corrupted files still remain!

I did a CHKDSK r repair for a few minutes and it seems to have solved the persistent errors that were appearing in Event Viewer.

The C Drive is now showing up in the Optimise Drives and SFC /Scannow while no longer fails at 55% but this time comes up Windows Resource Protection found corrupt files but was unable to fix some of them. This is after 100%.

This coincides with my new problem where I can no longer extract files. For example zip files for Extract all is now completely greyed out.

Before yesterday no such problems were ever experienced and resource protection scan never found integrity violations! I have been using this Windows 10 1903 version since fresh install in December 2021 and before that Windows 1809 from 2018 and never had any such errors. I used this registry after a fresh clean install in December 2021 Specify Target Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

; Created by: Shawn Brink
; Created on: June 29, 2020
; Updated on: October 16, 2021
; Tutorial: How to Specify Target Feature Update Version in Windows 10

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate]
"ProductVersion"="Windows 10"
"TargetReleaseVersion"=dword:00000001
"TargetReleaseVersionInfo"="1903"

That's how I remained on the final updated build version of 1903 for almost 3 years as this trick stops Windows 10 from updating to latest feature update version. But I know that those errors are not related to the old version of Windows 10. It is simply my Hard Drive that is failing.

So on the 18th of May these errors for the first time ever started to flood every 10 minutes to 1 hour. I had 100+ errors in Event Viewer. Inside the Event Viewer XML View log it will point the corruptions to Windows Media Player and Microsoft Photos. No idea why! I weren't even launching any of these programs.

Nothing was even running in the background. I made a test where I left my PC went to eat dinner and came back and saw these Device\Harddisk0\DR0, has a bad block errors.

Since yesterday after doing CHKDSK r repair these random errors have now stopped appearing! My PC is on for more than 3 hours and now Event Viewer is 0 and StorDiag is 0. So I think there is some wear and tear in my hard drive as these errors will eventually return again in future.

My hard drive is making some very mild buzzing sounds throughout the hours but no slow down in performance. This is a new experience recently and may explain why the errors got triggered.

I don't think it is safe to reinstall Windows on this hard drive again even if it installs in the clean sectors of the Hard Drive. As a result of these bad block errors it has caused some mild corruptions of my Windows 10 OS. At any point in future it will happen again regardless of Windows build version.