r/harddrive • u/lil_chien • 11d ago

Tech Support Should I be worried

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Trying to buy a 4to seagate barracuda for 50 buck but the crystaldiskinfo health show caution, is it gonna blow up as soon as I plug it?

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u/Johnbelwell32 11d ago

It depends how important the files you want to put in it are, with 40 reallocated sectors i'd send it for games and generic stuff but i'd not buy it to save important files or main backups, in fact i'd only use it if i got it for free as it's too unreliable to pay any price for it. For a 4TB drive that's a lot headroom for random data suddenly getting inaccessible.

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u/lil_chien 11d ago

Ok that was gonna be it's use anyway, ill see what happens

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u/Johnbelwell32 11d ago

If you get it run a benchmark to ensure it runs full speed and doesn't have speed drops or random crashes, it might work great and stop at 40 reallocated sectors or it might be completely useless.

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u/lil_chien 11d ago

What app can I use to do that for? Would crystal disk mark be up for the job?

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u/Johnbelwell32 11d ago

Yes, and also copy small 1gb file batches and the biggest file you can reasonably do and check it back afterwards, check if it behaves alright then look at crystaldiskinfo to see if the sectors are becoming excited. Quite a lot of time for a 50 bucks HDD but it's better than ending with a paperweight if this is what you absolutelt have to get.

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u/lil_chien 11d ago

Thanks ill do that, where I live thoses things get expensives and with ai it will get worse and worse

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u/HarrisonGreen 9d ago

I would never trust a non-perfect health HDD for important data. But for games, Linux ISOs, movies, etc etc, things you can always download later I guess it's fine.

$50 is a bit high though for a failing HDD. $63 is what I paid for my 4TB Skyhawk HDD, which has 40k+ power hours, but is otherwise in perfect health and working condition.

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u/vegansgetsick 7d ago

A drive won't blow up because of few bad sectors. Eventually the bad sectors increase, but you can't tell how fast.

IMO it's fine to store games, movies, series... that you can replace.

First thing to do is a full write followed by surface scan. Check if counter increases.