Bad Blocks

[spasmolytic]

I had a bad HDD block on my computer yesterday and the system prompted me to run a chkdsk. I did and so far I haven't had any more bad blocks. But the thing that concerns me is that I am also getting sporradic bad blocks on my CD-ROM drive. Could something be wrong with my mobo? Are bad blocks more prevalent on the new 7200 rpm drives? Last night I copied an entire CD to my hdd with no errors..

[LutaWicasa]

Probably get a quicker and more indepth answer at "Storage", so, away we go :)

[FTC]

Spasmol...,

It is quite unlikely that you have a problem in your mobo IF your results are consistent, that is, IF you got a bad sector AND chkdsk also found one. Also the fact that the other device is a CDROM makes me think the same... Note also that when accessing a hdd through IDE, there are some retrys implemented from within the BIOS/HDD driver, so if you are consistently detecting the same sector errors, it is probably just that, wrong errors beig developed by the hdd and/or scratched CD's.

However, it may be possible that you have a cabling problem... , (almost) broken cable and/or EMI or other noises disturbing the signal somehow. This is could happen randomly and just generate 'read sector errors' as well as 'write sector errors', 'lost interrupts (hangs)', or total disk corruption if your cable is bad/loose connection. I would say that if both devices (HD/CDROM) are in the same IDE channel AND you are using a 40 wire cable then the likelyhood of this is a bit higher. Just for safety, open the case, reseat the connectors and try to lay the cables a bit different... (although connected to the same devices). Also try to look for too strong cable bendings and/or deteriorated material/loose connections.

Hope this helps
Regards
FTC

[spasmolytic]

Thanks for the reply, I will check this tonight. I have ATA 100 cables for both my HDD and cdrom and they are both folded tight and tie wrapped. I'll reseat and cut the wraps and see if that helps. No errors at all yesterday.