What to do with old Hard Disk !!!

[Scott274]

So last month I had brought a new Seagate hard disk, prepared it and transferred all the data from my old Samsung hard disk (about 4 years old) to it. The reason for buying a new disk was, while working on my PC (old hard disk) sometimes I would hear a faint ticking noise and the the system used to freeze and then restart after a long time. Once restarted no hard disk used to be detected and I also used to get disk boot failure error on the second screen after restart. But after power off and on, the system used to start working again. This problem troubled me for almost more than a year. Most people I talked to advised me that the hard disk was going bad and so finally I brought a new disk.

Right now after transferring the all the data to the new drive I ran a hard disk diagnostic tool called "HUTIL" from the Samsung website on my old Samsung SP0802N disk. After completing the complete diagnostic test I got about 8 errors and the tool advised to run "ERASE HDD". I then ran the "Low Level Format" option in the tool. It gave me some error in the end but I think the process got completed. Here is a screenshot of current disk management in windows.

http://i91.photobucket.com/albums/k2...09-40119AM.jpg

Then I ran the diagnostic test again in "HUTIL" as these were the results..
---
Test Loop Number 1/1
Read DMA : Testing...
Error: Sector error
Check M.C : Testing... Pass!
Check S.M.A.R.T : Testing...
Error: S.M.A.R.T Threshold Exceeded.
Spin Down/Up : Testing... Pass!
Simple Read/Write : Testing... Pass!
Simple Surface Scan : Testing... Pass!
Write Verify : Testing... Pass!
Average Seek Time : Testing... Pass!
Maximum Seek Time : Testing... Pass!
Random Surface Scan : Testing... Pass!
Read Surface Scan : Testing...
C:1039 H:0 S:962 Error: Ecc error
C:1040 H:0 S:797 Error: Ecc error
C:1580 H:0 S:1037 Error: Ecc error
C:7354 H:0 S: 965 Error: Ecc error
Error : This drive has some defects.
---

Thats two less read surface scan errors than last time I think.

The disk is no longer under warranty so no point contacting any service centers. Now although my old disk is not very healthy, it is still usable and I was thinking of using it as a single partition storage drive. Is there anything more I could do to the disk to remove those errors and make it more healthy. Or should I just prepare/NTFS-format the drive and start using it.

[Sathish]

ya.. just prepare a single partition of NTFS and using it as media-backup-storage.

[Scott274]

In that samsung diagnostic tool "HUTIL" apart from low level format there is another option called MBR erase. what is that?? Any advantage or disadvantage performing it right now in my case.

[sude]

MBR erase means Master Boot Record Erase.

-SUDE