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I have a Toshiba C50-A laptop. When I checked my HDD (500 GB) with crystalDiskinfo disk health shows caution reallocated sectors count:16. Screenshot. Does it mean my HDD is failing? Does it have bad sectors? I checked with Chkdsk which showed no errors.NO BSOD or corrupt files so far. I am planning on getting an SSD and clone my HDD. Is cloning possible with bad sectors on source drive. Any recommendations on free cloning software to deal with this specific situation would be highly appreciated.

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If you have any valuable data on that disk, stop using it right now to minimize wear until you have a second drive to make backups.

HDDs have backup sectors that are normally unused. When "regular" sectors fail, they are replaced with backup sectors. "Reallocated sectors count: 16" means that 16 sectors were replaced with backup sectors. That's a good thing, it means your drive can operate as usual. It will be slightly slower in affected areas (disk head will have to move to outer area where backup sectors are), but it will work.

The problem is: once sectors start going bad, they usually go bad fast. At some point you will run out of backup sectors and you'll have actual bad sectors in your data. So get a new drive, clone this one before bad sectors pop up and get rid of it.

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