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Solve : 3 Bad Sectors on old PATA 20GB 2.5" laptop drive? |
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Answer» Found 3 bad sectors after a clean install of Windows XP to one of my Dell Laptops failed and I ATTACHED this HD to my Windows 7 build via IDE/USB dongle, and performing scandisk to it. Question I have is ... scan disk was able to repair these 3 sectors but they were flagged as bad so the drive should be good to use now that those locations are to be skipped over. Also definately going to check into the programs you mentioned as for I wasnt aware of an ability to see if other sectors have been mapped bad without comparing the usable space against what a healthy drives storage is and then calculate how much loss there is and then figure out how many sectors are flagged bad.All drives have a certain number of unallocated sectors when fresh from the factory, these are then used to reallocate bad sectors. Some older drives don't support SMART, and not all drives will give you all the information that can be read via SMART, but it's definitely worth checking because you should be able to see how many have been reallocated, and of course if the number begins to increase you know the drive is going downhill fast. Hopefully it will be of some use to you happy to help.I have Spinrite which is able to repair bad sectors. Not worth buying unless trying to resurrect an important drive. It's fixed several drives which were deemed "almost dead". http://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htmSpinrite is also a very handy tool to have when trying to get some important data off an almost dead drive, yes. Always a good idea to try and make a bit-for-bit image of the drive before using anything like that though, provided the drive's still in good enough shape to do so.Many industrial controls have hard drives which are never backed up. Most IT departments do not support them & management doesn't understand it & won't order them to support them by performing image backups.Quote from: DaveLembke on August 17, 2012, 12:22:31 PM Found 3 bad sectors after a clean install of Windows XP to one of my Dell Laptops failed and I attached this HD to my Windows 7 build via IDE/USB dongle, and performing scandisk to it. Question I have is ... scan disk was able to repair these 3 sectors but they were flagged as bad so the drive should be good to use now that those locations are to be skipped over.Once you can "see" bad sectors, it is at the file system level. Before that it uses the drives remapping, but you don't 'see' those bad sectors except with a S.M.A.R.T tool. Otherwise, it's stored as part of the filesystem. for example, With FAT, for example, Bad Sectors within clusters are dealt with using a special code within the FAT entry that represented the cluster containing the bad sector. This mean that data could be lost but that sector would never be used again. Quote If I reformat this drive does the bad sector map get wiped out or will the black flag sector map remain so that during a clean install of Windows XP in which the drive formats before installing clean I wont end up in the same boat as I did initially where it gets all the way through the install and then bails on the first time boot?Format checks the disk for bad sectors as it formats. It will "forget" the bad sectors (when it deletes the FAT or MFT) but will find them again as it formats. Note that a /q format just clears out the directory entries and doesn't actually remove the stored bad cluster information. (Setup doesn't use /q, though) I will stay out of the discussion regarding "spinrite" because otherwise I'll be here all day.Well, you learn something new every day, I stand corrected. Sorry!Quote from: Calum on August 17, 2012, 02:05:47 PM Well, you learn something new every day, I stand corrected. Sorry! Not really; the allocated spare sectors don't get cleared, only the bad sectors that the OS had to deal with after the drive ran out of spare sectors to invisibly use. Will; and at the same time those don't get wiped in the long run either, since when the drive is formatted again those bad sectors are rediscovered (often along with some new ones, too...), and marked again, so it won't be necessary to run, say, a surface scan with scandisk or something to "re-mark" OS-visible bad sectors again.Thanks Everyone ... Got the Laptop up and running and going to use software now to discover how bad the damage is that its skipping over. Kind of surprised that there is a piece of software that "could" repair a bad sector, as for it was my understanding that a bad sector was a physically damaged location of a platter. And given that the computer this drive came from looks like it went down a flight of steps, its a safe guess that there may be a scratch on the surface..ha ha. Just really glad that after 2 failed XP installs to the drive and Windows 7 marking/mapping the bad sectors, that this 3rd install of XP seems healthy now. * I didnt reformat the drive, Windows XP detected a prior install and I performed a repair install from here on building off of the prior bad installation vs reformatting and all is well!Quote from: DaveLembke on August 19, 2012, 09:09:10 AM Kind of surprised that there is a piece of software that "could" repair a bad sector, as for it was my understanding that a bad sector was a physically damaged location of a platter. This is part of why I said this: Quote I will stay out of the discussion regarding "spinrite" because otherwise I'll be here all day. Spinrite and it's author are not something I would call a source of "trustworthy information". it's 80% hype, 10% dangerous, and 10% real substance, but that 10% can be found elsewhere from firms that aren't doing a drunkards walk across IT. At the very least, looking at the history and claims made by the author should give any prospective user of the software pause. |
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