Bad Sectors Remover

Is there any bad sector remover available for free(preferable)/purchase.


Farhan

You don't WANT to remove bad sectors from your hard drive. They are failing
areas on the drive that have been marked as bad to prevent you from saving
data to the bad spots. If you remove the bad sector markers your system
would try to save data in the failing areas and you would likely lose
whatever was saved there.

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"Farhan" wrote in message
...
Is there any bad sector remover available for free(preferable)/purchase.


Farhan

On Thu, 28 Apr 2005 00:42:44 +0500, "Farhan" wrote:

Is there any bad sector remover available for free(preferable)/purchase.

There's only one context where a bad cluster "remover" is useful, and
that is where a partition is imaged from a failing HD to a good one,
thus carrying over the sick HD's bad cluster markers. As these
markers now have no link to the reality of the new HD, you'd want to
reset them, and so far I've been doing that on FATxx via DiskEdit.

There should be an easier way, and probably is.

However, if you haven't imaged from a sick HD to a good one - i.e. you
are still on the sick HD - then you should rather replace the sick HD.



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Chris
IIRC, running ScanDisk in Thorough mode rechecks bad sectors, doesn't it?
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q103956/


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Noel Paton (MS-MVP 2002-2005, Windows)

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"cquirke (MVP Windows shell/user)" wrote in
message news
On Thu, 28 Apr 2005 00:42:44 +0500, "Farhan" wrote:

Is there any bad sector remover available for free(preferable)/purchase.

There's only one context where a bad cluster "remover" is useful, and
that is where a partition is imaged from a failing HD to a good one,
thus carrying over the sick HD's bad cluster markers. As these
markers now have no link to the reality of the new HD, you'd want to
reset them, and so far I've been doing that on FATxx via DiskEdit.

There should be an easier way, and probably is.

However, if you haven't imaged from a sick HD to a good one - i.e. you
are still on the sick HD - then you should rather replace the sick HD.



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bad sectors are parts of the disk that are unable to have data written due
to damage (eg they can occur from phsically-jolting or rough handling of the
system case or dropping the hard drive, which can cause physical damage to
the disk platters inside the Hard drive casing.


The read-write heads hover only a hair's with above the surface of the
disk - any jolt could cause obvious damage from the r/w head impacting the
surface of the disk.

"Farhan" wrote in message
...
Is there any bad sector remover available for free(preferable)/purchase.


Farhan

we're talking about bad SECTORS not bad clusters - two different things.

"cquirke (MVP Windows shell/user)" wrote in
message news
On Thu, 28 Apr 2005 00:42:44 +0500, "Farhan" wrote:

Is there any bad sector remover available for free(preferable)/purchase.

There's only one context where a bad cluster "remover" is useful, and
that is where a partition is imaged from a failing HD to a good one,
thus carrying over the sick HD's bad cluster markers. As these
markers now have no link to the reality of the new HD, you'd want to
reset them, and so far I've been doing that on FATxx via DiskEdit.

There should be an easier way, and probably is.

However, if you haven't imaged from a sick HD to a good one - i.e. you
are still on the sick HD - then you should rather replace the sick HD.



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On Sat, 30 Apr 2005 09:49:22 +0100, "Noel Paton"

Chris

Hi!

IIRC, running ScanDisk in Thorough mode rechecks bad sectors, doesn't it?

I don't think it does, unless you force it to via a setting of some
kind. I say that because I usually see a scan stop and retry bad
sectors when they are discovered to be bad, but it always glosses over
existing B(ad) blocks with no pause unless it discoveres a new one.

In the context of a partition imaged across from a sick HD to a good
one, simply running Scandisk surface scan (in DOS mode, I don't use
the Windows one) shows the same B(ad) markers in the same place - a
consequence of carrying over the FATs verbatim - and doesn't un-mark
these when it surface scans the volume.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q103956/

Not the article I hoped it was (i.e. the one that mentions a possible
parameter to force re-testing of clusters already marked bad)

I find it quicker to search for and edit out BAD markers in the FATs
via DiskEdit than look up the setting and redo the surface scan, but I
agree this is not the best approach for most users ;-)



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On Sun, 1 May 2005 13:25:36 +0800, "Andrew Murray"

we're talking about bad SECTORS not bad clusters - two different things.

Not all that different; a bad cluster is a cluster that contains one
or more bad sectors. Not to be confused with lost cluster chains,
which is a file system logic error with no hardware significance.



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