On Wednesday, November 03, 2010 02:51:02 pm RedShift wrote: > On 11/03/10 17:01, Keith Roberts wrote: > > Could a bad controller or bad RAM cause Hard Drive sector > > errors? > > > > Neither bad RAM or a bad controllor can physically damage a hard drive. A bad controller will not cause reallocated sectors. It can however cause UDMA CRC errors and other weird non-SMART related behaviour. Might want to check the power supply as well. Bad/flakey power can indeed case damage to the drive surface; been there, done that, have two Maxtor 250GB drives with scribbled servo data to prove it.