How can I find out whether there are bad clusters on a harddrive?

I used the built-in utilities of Windows XP and see nothing there.

Yet the service man told my daughter, her harddrive had bad clusters which
every now and then gave her a blue screen and said the system has to shut
down.

I have that HD now in my external housing and see nothing bad, but I might
be missing something.

"How can I find out whether there are bad clusters on a harddrive?"

Open a command prompt (Start > All Programs > Accessories > Command Prompt)
and type chkdsk c: (if you want to check the C drive), then press Enter on
your keyboard. Look for how many KB are in bad sectors.

If a hard drive continuously develops bad clusters, that's a sign that it
needs to be replaced, and quickly.

First: Backup everything that is important; if you can backup the entire
hard drive, so much the better.

Second: Go to the web site of the manufacturer of the hard drive and obtain
their diagnostic software (it's free.) Run the diagnostic software, and if
it indicates a problem with the hard disk, get it replaced immediately.

Ted Zieglar

"Ritter197" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:i7SdnaAWX-AtRrLcRVn-(E-Mail Removed)...
> How can I find out whether there are bad clusters on a harddrive?
>
> I used the built-in utilities of Windows XP and see nothing there.
>
> Yet the service man told my daughter, her harddrive had bad clusters which
> every now and then gave her a blue screen and said the system has to shut
> down.
>
> I have that HD now in my external housing and see nothing bad, but I might
> be missing something.
>
>
>

open my compyter,R-click on the H-D in
Q,,,,properties,,,tools tab,,,under error checking
button,,,select both boxes to repair,,,run the scan,,,at
the end it gives you a report of the clucters.If it's in
the computer it came with it will run it at start-up when
the drive is not in use.Then you can view it running the
test on each cluster.Think someone fed her a
crock 'O' s**t!It's probably a hardware problem with her
computer that's giving her the BSOD(blue screen of
death).I would check the device manager while it's in her
computer.See if there's any red X or yellow! in there and
try to resolve them if you find any.Also if you can get
the stop code on the BSOD,Get it and post here with
them.Or do a google search with it or search MS
database.It will help you more than the ol it's got bad
clusters(translation:I've booted it 50 times used it for
2 weeks and found nothing wrong with it,that'll be
$157.79 .)
>-----Original Message-----
>How can I find out whether there are bad clusters on a
harddrive?
>
>I used the built-in utilities of Windows XP and see
nothing there.
>
>Yet the service man told my daughter, her harddrive had
bad clusters which
>every now and then gave her a blue screen and said the
system has to shut
>down.
>
>I have that HD now in my external housing and see
nothing bad, but I might
>be missing something.
>
>
>
>.
>

Thank you so much. I found 16 bad clusters.


"Ted Zieglar aka Rocky" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:%232Z%(E-Mail Removed)...
> "How can I find out whether there are bad clusters on a harddrive?"
>
> Open a command prompt (Start > All Programs > Accessories > Command
Prompt)
> and type chkdsk c: (if you want to check the C drive), then press Enter on
> your keyboard. Look for how many KB are in bad sectors.
>
> If a hard drive continuously develops bad clusters, that's a sign that it
> needs to be replaced, and quickly.
>
> First: Backup everything that is important; if you can backup the entire
> hard drive, so much the better.
>
> Second: Go to the web site of the manufacturer of the hard drive and
obtain
> their diagnostic software (it's free.) Run the diagnostic software, and if
> it indicates a problem with the hard disk, get it replaced immediately.
>
> Ted Zieglar
>
> "Ritter197" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
> news:i7SdnaAWX-AtRrLcRVn-(E-Mail Removed)...
> > How can I find out whether there are bad clusters on a harddrive?
> >
> > I used the built-in utilities of Windows XP and see nothing there.
> >
> > Yet the service man told my daughter, her harddrive had bad clusters
which
> > every now and then gave her a blue screen and said the system has to
shut
> > down.
> >
> > I have that HD now in my external housing and see nothing bad, but I
might
> > be missing something.
> >
> >
> >
>

Carl, I had checked it your way and found nothing wrong. I did also check it
as some other good soul suggested and found 16 bad clusters. BUT - they were
on her virtual disk (I had set up for her earlier) and the only had
Applications on them.

The first partition had the Operating System Windows XP on it and that
showed no bad clusters at all.

While I was at her house I did check the Device Mgr. and it showed nowhere
any exclamation marks or yellow marks.


"Carl" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:041e01c48ca1$1412dba0$(E-Mail Removed)...
> open my compyter,R-click on the H-D in
> Q,,,,properties,,,tools tab,,,under error checking
> button,,,select both boxes to repair,,,run the scan,,,at
> the end it gives you a report of the clucters.If it's in
> the computer it came with it will run it at start-up when
> the drive is not in use.Then you can view it running the
> test on each cluster.Think someone fed her a
> crock 'O' s**t!It's probably a hardware problem with her
> computer that's giving her the BSOD(blue screen of
> death).I would check the device manager while it's in her
> computer.See if there's any red X or yellow! in there and
> try to resolve them if you find any.Also if you can get
> the stop code on the BSOD,Get it and post here with
> them.Or do a google search with it or search MS
> database.It will help you more than the ol it's got bad
> clusters(translation:I've booted it 50 times used it for
> 2 weeks and found nothing wrong with it,that'll be
> $157.79 .)
> >-----Original Message-----
> >How can I find out whether there are bad clusters on a
> harddrive?
> >
> >I used the built-in utilities of Windows XP and see
> nothing there.
> >
> >Yet the service man told my daughter, her harddrive had
> bad clusters which
> >every now and then gave her a blue screen and said the
> system has to shut
> >down.
> >
> >I have that HD now in my external housing and see
> nothing bad, but I might
> >be missing something.
> >
> >
> >
> >.
> >

"Ritter197" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:veadnZr9APG7dLLcRVn-(E-Mail Removed)...
> Thank you so much. I found 16 bad clusters.
>
>

Bad clusters can be the result of a one-time event, which isn't good, but
it's not a drive-killing thing. But if the clusters keep growing, it's a
sign that the drive is dying.

You could try downloading the diagnostic program from the hard drive
manufacturer's website and see what that says. And in some cases, you need
the results from that program if you want to return a drive under warranty.

do you Defrag?

Ritter197 wrote:

> How can I find out whether there are bad clusters on a harddrive?
>
> I used the built-in utilities of Windows XP and see nothing there.
>
> Yet the service man told my daughter, her harddrive had bad clusters which
> every now and then gave her a blue screen and said the system has to shut
> down.
>
> I have that HD now in my external housing and see nothing bad, but I might
> be missing something.

Yes, all the time with professional Diskkeeeper Pro software.


"Mae T" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> do you Defrag?
>
> Ritter197 wrote:
>
> > How can I find out whether there are bad clusters on a harddrive?
> >
> > I used the built-in utilities of Windows XP and see nothing there.
> >
> > Yet the service man told my daughter, her harddrive had bad clusters
which
> > every now and then gave her a blue screen and said the system has to
shut
> > down.
> >
> > I have that HD now in my external housing and see nothing bad, but I
might
> > be missing something.
>

Just two notes here. The Defragger built in to XP is Disk Keeper Lite.
Second, the service man probably made that up if your Disk Keeper
software hasn't identified any bad clusters on the hard drive. Try
using ScanDisk (right click on the "bad" drive and click Properties,
Tools, then ScanDisk. It will tell you if you have bad clusters or not.
I usually see Blue Screens from hardware conflicts or bad memory, not
because of a bad read from the hard drive.

----
Nathan McNulty


Ritter197 wrote:
> Yes, all the time with professional Diskkeeeper Pro software.
>
>
> "Mae T" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
> news:(E-Mail Removed)...
>
>>do you Defrag?
>>
>>Ritter197 wrote:
>>
>>
>>>How can I find out whether there are bad clusters on a harddrive?
>>>
>>>I used the built-in utilities of Windows XP and see nothing there.
>>>
>>>Yet the service man told my daughter, her harddrive had bad clusters
>
> which
>
>>>every now and then gave her a blue screen and said the system has to
>
> shut
>
>>>down.
>>>
>>>I have that HD now in my external housing and see nothing bad, but I
>
> might
>
>>>be missing something.
>>
>
>

On Fri, 27 Aug 2004 21:11:16 -0400, "Ritter197"

>How can I find out whether there are bad clusters on a harddrive?

Best is to test the HD with an OS-agnostic diagnostic. You cannot
trust the OS with this stuff, especially if NTFS.

If not NTFS, you can use DOS mode Scandisk and surface scan. That
shows a map of cluster space with previously "fixed" bad clusters
visible - plus you can see latency when the HD's firmware tries to
"fix" bad sectors (thus hiding impending failure from you).

But Scandisk can't test NTFS, and ChkDsk /R is even more aggressive in
hiding impending failure from you. No prompts on errors, it "fixes"
automatically - plus, you have two levels of on-the-fly failure-hiding
systems, the HD's own firmware plus NTFS's on-the-fly "fixing".

That being the case, NTFS is more likely to have hidden bad sectors
from you, and so it becomes more important to see what has been going
on - by reading SMART's logs of what has been "fixed" at the HD
firmware level at least. The HD vendor's web site usually has free
tools that gives a "quick" test (just an editorialized summary of
stored SMART logs) plus a longer test that actually tries reading the
HD disk surface, rather than looking only at SMART logs.

OTOH, some 3rd-party utils such as AIDA32 give you more detailed SMART
info; e.g. instead of "normal", an actual error count.

>Yet the service man told my daughter, her harddrive had bad clusters which
>every now and then gave her a blue screen and said the system has to shut
>down.

Bad clusters are like small strokes. You will lose data,
functionality, possibly the whole installation, if you let them bite.

>I have that HD now in my external housing and see nothing bad, but I might
>be missing something.

Those are highly at risk, because:
- wobbly power and cabling
- poor ventillation
- risk of being dropped

If you want to kill a HD, then cook it, spike the power to it, and
spin it up and down a lot.



>--------------- ----- ---- --- -- - - -
Who is General Failure and
why is he reading my disk?
>--------------- ----- ---- --- -- - - -