Repairing Bad Blocks / Sectors

[WarriorII]

I've been having issues with my system.

Seems I have a few bad sectors / Blocks on all 4 of my drives.

Each is independant of anything else & has its own OS.

I've run a MBR repair.

I've run scan disk.

I've even tried Nortons DD & other stuff off the Utilities CD.

I've written all 0's to the drive & reformatted & reinstalled about 3x per drive now.

Still no luck on repairing the bad sectors.

All are out of warranty. 2 Maxtor 40 gigs & an 80 gig Maxy & some 'ole 15 gig WD.

I did use a hdd tray & found that the tray seemed to go bad & I removed it.
now I can see the hdd in the boot up screen
- not before tray removal. (bad tray)

How can I repair the bad sectors / blocks on my hdd?

I do have the UltimateBootCD.....

TIA
:cool:

[Jon]

Well, first I guess I need to know what discovered the bad blocks/sectors. Every hard drive manufactured has some, but they are normally remapped to additional blocks/sectors to make up for the space. If you're using some type of low level utility to uncover these, they should not be an issue.

Also, are the bad blocks/sectors causing system problems? If not, you may actually be OK. If they are causing data corruption or instability, I really don't have anything new for you to try. Maybe try CHKDSK from a boot disk if you haven't, but there is no real way to "repair" these blocks/sectors. They will simply be flagged and skipped. Problem with bad blocks/sectors is that when you start getting them, they tend to spread like a cancer.

Appears most of those drives are fairly old to begin with and it's probably to be expected. I would definately start looking into a way to save data if you need to.

EDIT:

One last thing, but is definately a last resort. Go to the manufacturer's site of each drive and see if they offer a low level format utility. This will return each drive to the original state it was in when shipped. The bonus here is that some LLF utilities include bad block/sector checking and will either reassign or flag them during the process. However, be forewarned that a LLF can also completely hose a HDD if the corruption is bad enough. But if you resort to this method, you have nothing to lose anyway.

[WarriorII]

Last one was Nortons Ghost proggy, I tried to install an image I made after a complete
clean install on one of the hdds.

I can't get windows to boot at all any more.

it use to make it to the splash screen.

I can't even get in in safe mode now.

thanks, i'll try chkdisk.

[wrangler88]

did u try spinrite? that might be able to help...

[Dukeman]

I would recommend using either Seagate's SeaTools Desktop (http://www.seagate.com/support/seatools/) Dos version which has a long scan with sector repair (I think it works on any drive) or Hitachi's DFT (http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/download.htm) (may only work on Hitachi) which also has a sector repair. These are free.

Spinrite (http://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm) costs but it may be what you need to completely clean the drive. I haven't used it and I don't know how it works but it looks like it does "magic" to the drive.

[Honest_Bob]

In my experience only more bad sectors are gonna crop up. Something bouncing around in there caused it in the first place. Time to back up your data and get a new drive. :bang head

[Binman_UK]

In my experience only more bad sectors are gonna crop up. Something bouncing around in there caused it in the first place. Time to back up your data and get a new drive. :bang head

I agree - if i get any bad/reallocated sectors, I back up my stuff RMA/replace the drive immediately. In my experience, it's not worth taking the risk, because the bad sectors could be the result of a larger underlying problem and could spread quickly throughout the disk. If your drives are under warranty and you have a way of backing up your data, you may as well do this to be safe.
Also, in my experience, there is no way to completely "repair" or "fix" a drive with bad sectors - they probably occurred for a reason and they're there to stay - although there is software available to "hide" these from the operating system and/or take preventative measures to reduce the likelihood of them spreading. i.e Spinrite.

Binny.

[stolen]

do you have any warranty on the drives?

[Mr.Guvernment]

do you have any warranty on the drives?



All are out of warranty. 2 Maxtor 40 gigs & an 80 gig Maxy & some 'ole 15 gig WD.

[WarriorII]

Forgot about posting this... :-/

I'll give the Seagate Tools a try.

Thanks for the info.

:cool:

[WarriorII]

OK, Sea Tools worked very nice. The Hataci one read fine but would not repair an "other" type drive.

Reran Maxtors PowerBlast worked this time.

80 gig hdd = toast
30 gig hdd = ok
40 gig hdd = repaired in 1 sec, test ok fine now.

Thanks everyone for all the info.
:cool:

[Mr.Guvernment]

wo ohoo

just be careful with that 40g.