Corrupt files a hazard to healthy drive?

[Let's Sekuhara!]

I have a partially corrupt external hard drive and am attempting to move what files I can salvage from it onto my new Mac. If some of the files I'm moving are corrupt could they be bad for the hard drive of the new Mac?

When I'm trying to copy files over to my USB flash drive (using my old Windows machine) I keep getting errors like "bad sector" and "drive is not formatted. would you like to format it now?" It seems I can get about 80~90% of the files off of the drive, which is great. I'm just worried that if any of the files are corrupt they might confuse the computer trying to read them and cause a problem.

Is this a valid concern or just me being paranoid?

 

[snipes300]

info

By corrupt hard drive do you mean it has a virus

 

[Let's Sekuhara!]

No. I have no reason to believe it has a virus. Just certain files and file folders are unreadable. They cannot be opened or copied over. The reason is probably because:
1. The drive is pretty old
2. It's been transported a lot
3. It's not a reputable brand

 

[Let's Sekuhara!]

I will make the conclusion then (since there haven't been any more posts) that there is no reason to worry that corrupt data can cause physical problems for a drive. Cool. Case closed.

 

[ThirteenXIII]

I will make the conclusion then (since there haven't been any more posts) that there is no reason to worry that corrupt data can cause physical problems for a drive. Cool. Case closed.

Well...not necessarily.

Corrupted Data and Hard Drive failure/Corrupt Hard Drive kind of go hand in hand, if the data is corrupt more than likely the drive itself is as well.
Which will lead to further data corruption and fragmentation issues.

Best bet, when in doubt definitely get a new replacement drive, better safe than sorry!

 

[CanadaRAM]

Well...not necessarily.

Corrupted Data and Hard Drive failure/Corrupt Hard Drive kind of go hand in hand, if the data is corrupt more than likely the drive itself is as well.
Which will lead to further data corruption and fragmentation issues.

Best bet, when in doubt definitely get a new replacement drive, better safe than sorry!

Re-read post #1
The OP is already moving the files to a new drive.

Let's S. - If you are doing a Finder copy, then the Finder will only copy valid files, so will ignore (or more likely fail on) bad files/folders. Your main risk is that it will quit transferring when it hits a bad file, and you will not know without investigating whether it copied all of the good files you intended to copy from those folders or not.

If you are using Carbon Copy Cloner, then it will attempt to do a low level copy first (IIRC -- read the manual for details). In that case it may succeed in copying files that are badly structured or incomplete. This will NOT do any physical damage to your new drive, but it COULD lead to OS crashes when you try to open them.

 

[Let's Sekuhara!]

This will NOT do any physical damage to your new drive, but it COULD lead to OS crashes when you try to open them.

Thank you, Canada RAM! That completely satisfies my inquiry. You rock.
And in my case, since the files are just media files and not programs, I think it's very unlikely that they would cause an OS crash when opened.