windows 7 - Continuous scanning of hard disk for bad sectors

I have a WD hard disk (1 TB additional drive to my PC). For the last 10 days, surprisingly its accessing speed plunged. I thought something wrong with my PC first. Later on, I realized that I may be victim of bad sectors.

I used "Advanced system manager" to scan the disk which confirmed bad sectors on my disk. But it stuck on J: after 58%. I tried 2 times. It fixed bad sectors of H:, and I: was free from bad sectors. [I left the PC for processing at least for 16 -18 hours]

Now my PC started to work properly. But since i was worrying about my data, I tried widows disk scan utility who stuck again. [I left the PC for processing at least for 10 -12 hours]

Next time I tried "HDD Regenerator" who found 22 bad sectors. But it failed to repair same in windows mode. And since its bootable USB was not working, so I failed reparing at the time of system startup.

This time I tried programs from "Hiren Boot CD". One of the tool stuck after 58% done. I tried "WD diagnostic tool" who found errors on my drive and returned 007 response code. It recovery tool failed with response code 225 (as I remembered). So this time I again tried "HDD regenerator". Till 58% It was running fine and found around 34 bad sectors. He regenerated them too. But now onwards it is regularly finding bad sectors and regenerating sectors which is making me afraid.

Now my questions are;

1. Whether scanning a HDD continuously for bad sectors can increase them?


2. If a software find bad sectors and repair them then whether another application again report same bad sectors?


3. Whether I must replace my hard disk.


4. If I cut/copy data from this disk to new one, whether the bad sectors can be copied to. (It might look a stupid question, but I am able to backup smoothly. So I am doubtful)


5. If a HDD gets bad sector (even if very less number of bad sectors) then the chance of HDD crash gets increased?

Answer

First off, bad sectors will not be copied over.

Most of the time, programs that claim to fix bad sectors do not fix them. What they do is find out where the bad sectors are and put police ropes all around them to prevent your system from writing data to those blocks. Does is work all of the time?, no.

You should replace the disk. You risk your data by not replacing the disk.

Copy everything as soon as possible.

You can also try to do a full format on the hard drive (once you get as much data off as possible). Sometimes a full format will help clear up any bad sectors, but is more of a long shot.

Scanning the HDD continuously should not increase bad sectors, but got, it'd be annoying to keep scanning drives with bad sectors.

One thing i've done in the past with a bad disk (more motor related) with is plugged it in outside of the computer. I had a pan of some water and ice sitting on the drive (after having it in the freezer for a bit). I kept the drive extremely cold and was able to copy over data.