failing harddrive and corrupted database

my internal harddrive started failing ( confirmed by using Crystaldisk) and I replaced it before too much harm could be done. This harddrive was just used for data storage and backups with the exception of running the database of my email program on it. The email program runs on my OS drive but the database was stored on the internal data drive. I did that as my email database is about 10gb and I wanted to keep the images smaller.
Well, that idea was not so great as the database is now corrupted due to the failing drive and I don't have an image to use ( I do have lots of images but they would only go back in time for the actual email program which then would again check on the failed drive for the messages). I did have backups of the email program but the drive must have started to fail a few weeks ago and my two backups are recent (2 weeks), so would already have partially corrupted data.

My question is after having changed the harddrive, I have now deleted and reinstalled the email program.
I will set this to store emails on my OS drive (leaving me with the option to go back via images if something like this happens again). If I were to import one of the recent backups with some corruptions I have, what would be the effect? I understand that maybe one account would have incomplete emails (as this is the account that I noticed having problems) or perhaps some emails across a number of email accounts could not be retrieved. I could live with that - are there any other likely consequences? Will importing a known file with some corruptions (not sure how serious it is as I was using the program until yesterday) cause instability to the whole database or the new drive?

 

This is impossible to answer. Ideally, it would cause no problems but this assumes nothing else is corrupted. I say try it and see. But first, make sure you have a good backup of everything now so you don't corrupt your new setup without a way to back out.

 

Bill, yes, that's what I did and so far things are running smoothly but maybe it's early days.

 

And it may last for years without incident, start giving problems next week. About all I can advise is to stay on top of your backups.