[conspire] 3rd Master Hard Disk Error

[paulz at ieee.org]

 In using the computer, I was not aware of any malfunctions.  What I saw were:* The message from the BIOS running POST* When running Win7, it started popping up a window saying a drive was failing and that I should run a backup.
The Seagate Tool did not run on the "bad" computer with Win7.   On a newer machine with Win10, it identified and tested a Toshiba drive.
I went back to the Seagate website, but could not find a different (older) version.  In the interest of science, I will try the USB version.

Going forward:  Win 7 kept nagging me to back up.  Well I have copied all of MY data files off the system.  Now suppose I did a windows backup, what would it get me?   
   - If I replace the harddrive, can I use the backup to install windows 7?
   - What if I also replace the motherboard?  Pretty sure that won't work.
   - So I replace hard drive and do a clean install of Debian, can I use the back up to run under a virtual drive?
   - In short, is there anything useful I can do with the backup?
BTW, I do have the install CD, but not sure if I can re-use the serial number with new hardware. 



     On Tuesday, November 20, 2018, 11:45:37 PM PST, Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com> wrote:  was 
 
 Quoting Paul Zander (paulz at ieee.org):

> Reallocated SectorCount Value 3, Threshold 36, Worst 3
> 
> From the many other entries I think possibly this means there are only
> 3 spare sectors left to re-allocate.

No.  This is related to some hocus-pocus going on in the drive's
on-board electronics to swap in spare sectors.  Quoting a small piece of
https://superuser.com/questions/384095/how-to-force-a-remap-of-sectors-reported-in-s-m-a-r-t-c5-current-pending-sector
:

  Most modern drives contain a number of "spare" sectors (e.g. 1,024
  spare sectors). If the drive recognizes a sector as bad, it will stop
  using it. Any requests to read or write to that damaged sector will
  transparently be redirected to a spare sector. This marking off of a bad
  sector, and reallocating its data to a spare sector, is called a
  Reallocation Event. And the total number of sectors that have been
  reallocated (and so how many of your spare sectors have been used up) is
  the Reallocated Sector Count.


But, that aside, you say the drive failed [something].  OK, and maybe
the remapping of those three failing sectors to spare sectors, behind
the scenes, is part of a slow loss of sectors that's ongoing and will 
eventually exhaust all spare sectors, after which you'd start actually
losing data living on failing sectors.  You didn't say what 'failed'
meant, nor -- the important number -- how many spare sectors remain.

Just as a guess, not having the data you (apparently) saw, I suspect
what you want to do is this:
http://knowledge.seagate.com/articles/en_US/FAQ/203931en
That might fix all current problems.  (If not, the device can always
achieve its best and highest purpose as landfill.)

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