Maximum PC

Generally use Win 7 Professional SP1, 64 bit. CPU= Core i7, 2.67 GHz. It's a custom machine with Asus P6T mobo built in 2009.
The drive is a Western Digital 300GB VelociRaptor installed early in 2009 - warranty long past. Drive has 4 partitions, the first two being primary partitions. [XP 64 on first, Win 7 in second partition] About 3 months ago bad sectors began showing up in that first XP partition - which is rarely used. Chkdsk /R made repairs but my backup program (TerraByte) still found problem sectors. The Western Digital diagnostic program, WinDlg.exe (Windows version), is unable to run its 'Quick Test' and the 'Extended Test' turned up several bad sectors in the area from 175 million through 177 million out of 586 million sectors. Everything else on the disk is good. The bad sectors all lie well inside to XP area of the disk, so I don't normally need or use that area. The diagnostic tried to repair all but could not - with message that I should contact WD tech support. The tech told me to replace the drive. No surprise, lazy answer. [NB: the DOS version of this diagnostic, DLGdiav519.exe, could not complete the Quick test and I did not try its Extended test version.]

My question: What are the odds that this bad sector "infection" will soon spread to other areas of the drive? If I reformat this partition, would that not mark out the bad area and leave me with a functioning disk?

Thanks for your thoughts.

Once the hard drive starts showing bad sectors, the lazy tech is right, it is time to replace the drive. The bad sectors can be caused by the write heads touching the hard drive and causing the problem...bearings do wear out.

Nasty

Are you sure that the drive is out of warranty? I thought they had a 3 year, and some had 5 year warranties.

Enter your serial numbers here and check

Wow, thank you NSVander. My lucky day 'cause the drive is in the 5 year class and replacement was approved.