Yup backup goes without saying.. thing is, that HDD is just over a year old... anyway just waiting for Mint going LTS then gonna slip in a new SSD ( not for speed so much as Linux is quick as is.. but for longevity rather) and restore the disk image.
Thanx Paul, but I don't think it's worth "saving" as such, got a new SSD as primary - however I will see if I can partition the bad clusters and use the rest as temp. storage for carrying around with my notebook instead - until it finally goes to la-la land ...
i am glad i was of some use here. just remember one thing, the bad sectors really multiply quick, the hdd's arm cpu tried to allocate data of that region to another. and also the bitmap plays a major role in block device's IO. so try the seagate tool or hdparm to fix the issue. it will start to multiply and spread soon or else. hope this helps! thanks! -paul