I have 4 bad sectors on my hard disk, should I be worried?

I use Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. Here are some screenshots that depict the condition of my hard drive. It shows that my hard drive has 4 bad sectors. Is this something to worry about? Is there any way to solve this problem?

Solution 1:

I would say not. It is quite normal for a Hard Disk to have some bad sectors, they can be caused by many reasons, and four is a small number. A Harddisk can have bad sectors when it comes right from the factory. Bad sectors are listed by the disk controller and are remapped, not used anymore. Modern Hard DIsks have spare sectors to replace the defective ones. When the number of bad sectors is considered to be a problem depends on the standards of the manufacturer of the disk.

More interesting than the absolute number of bad sectors would be to check after some time, and keep track if the number of bad sectors increases.

Reference:

• Bad sector - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
• S.M.A.R.T. - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia