Unless I analyze the disk surface with professional-grade tools I wouldn’t presume to know the exact cause either. There’s no easy way to tell in advance if DRevitalize or HDDregenerator will correct the problem. All depends on the cause. If it was a power problem or brownout or improper disconnect, or even a software glitch, I’d say one of those utilities has a great chance of re-writing the faulty sector.
Perhaps when you “fixed” it with CHKDSK, you corrected a logical problem in the metafiles, or simply remapped a bad sector and recorded the change in those same metafiles. Who’s to say without inspecting the chkdsk logs and disk surface in question.
Why not check WD’s website to see if your s/n is under warranty? The last time I rma’d a disk through them they sent me out a replacement almost immediately, and when I got the disk I sent my faulty drive back. So in effect, it was a 1-afternoon exchange.
If your internal disk is in good working order, and you have not given me reason to believe it is not, why not keep the movies there AND on the suspect Passport drive. This way you have two copies of your data for good safekeeping. You should always have 2 copies of anything you want to save. Always.
RMA it and then just transfer the files when you get the replacement disk. It’s really that simple.
