61GB in bad sectors (ref: 200GB drive reads as 128)

[Stoyou]

Sorry for the long post.

My problem is that I have corrupted data (61132684 KB in bad sectors) on my
200GB WD hard drive. That's right - 61GB!
Not too happy with that because I had a difficult time partitioning and
installing xp on the drive and had to settle for a single partition. Each
effort to make multiple partitions resulted in less than 186GB of total
avail. space.
So, I installed with a Windows XP Pro with SP1a CD on the single partition
(186GB).
My Intel 845 motherboard already had the latest BIOS (48-bit LBA support
confirmed).
Things went fine as far as I could tell.
I've had no problems with the correct space being reported or bad sectors
for the last month or so. I just happend to take a look at available space
last night and was shocked to see only 85.4GB left! Well, I only have
40.8GB (44,387 Files, 2,234 Folders) of data on my C:\ so obviously
something is wrong somewhere.
186-40.8 != 85.4

Running chkdsk found this:

"C:\Documents and Settings\Scott>chkdsk
The type of the file system is NTFS.
Volume label is XP Professional.

WARNING! F parameter not specified.
Running CHKDSK in read-only mode.

CHKDSK is verifying files (stage 1 of 3)...
File verification completed.
CHKDSK is verifying indexes (stage 2 of 3)...
Index verification completed.
CHKDSK is verifying security descriptors (stage 3 of 3)...
Security descriptor verification completed.
Correcting errors in the Volume Bitmap.
Windows found problems with the file system.
Run CHKDSK with the /F (fix) option to correct these.

195350368 KB total disk space.
44652732 KB in 43976 files.
16268 KB in 2255 indexes.
61,132,684 KB in bad sectors.
140072 KB in use by the system.
65536 KB occupied by the log file.
89408612 KB available on disk.

4096 bytes in each allocation unit.
48837592 total allocation units on disk.
22352153 allocation units available on disk."

I ran "chkdsk /f" (required a reboot) but the bad sectors have stayed.
Nothing has changed with "chkdsk /r" either.

WD's Data Lifeguard Quick Test results:
Test Option: QUICK TEST
Model Number: WDC WD2000BB-00DAA3
Serial Number: WD-WMACK1926431
Firmware Number: 571.B357
Drive Type: IDE
Port Number: 0, Primary/Master
Capacity: 134.22 GB
SMART Status: PASS
Test Result: PASS
Test Time: 18:31:51, September 14, 2004

After lots of googlin' I finally found MKBA-303013.

I checked my registry and
"HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Atapi\Parameters\" did
NOT have the "EnableBigLba" key AT ALL!

That was one thing I didn't do and I don't know how if this is responsible
for the problem.

I also don't know if adding this key will solve the problem (I am backing up
all my data now so I will give it a shot).

The reason I'm bugging you is I want to know if I can EVER get XP to
recognize the whole 200GB drive and (if it comes down to another fresh
install)
HOW DO I INSTALL XP PROPERLY to do that.
There's no time PRE-installation to edit the registry. SP1, I would think,
should have set this key but it didn't.

Is there something I'm missing or am I hosed?
Is the Data Lifeguard Quick Test telling me anything (except the incorrect
capacity) ?


Thanks in advance!

 

[NoNoBadDog!]

186 GB would be the expected capacity of a 200GB hard drive. This is due to
the different way that drive manufacturers and Windows identify the size of
a drive. Drive manufacturers identify a megabyte as 1,000 bytes, when in
truth it is 1.024 bytes and is identified as such by windows. It is this
difference that accounts for the difference you are seeing. No matter how
you partition the drive, you will not get 200GB from the drive.

Bobby

 

[Vanguardx]

"NoNoBadDog!" <mypants_bjsledgeATpixi.com>
wrote in

... Drive manufacturers identify a
megabyte as 1,000 bytes, when in truth it is 1.024 bytes and is
identified as such by windows.

<snip>

1 *kilobyte* = 1,000 bytes for manufacturers,
or 1024 bytes when binary based (2^10 bytes)

1 *megabyte* = 1,000,000 bytes for mfrs,
or 1,048,576 bytes binary based (2^20 bytes)

1 gigabyte = 1,000,000,000 bytes for mfrs,
or 1,073,741,824 bytes binary based (2^30 bytes)

So 200,000,000,000 / 1,073,741,824 = 186.26. Manufacturers love to
distort numbers to their advantage. They're doing the same crap with
response times for LCD monitors (see http://snipurl.com/92xn and
http://snipurl.com/92xk).

With the spare sectors on the drive to which bad ones are remapped,
there should be enough of them (when the drive was new) to have it
measure out to its 200 GB decimal (or 186 GB binary based) size. I have
a 9-month old 120GB WD drive and CHKDSK reports 0 (zero) bad sectors.
61GB of bad sectors on a 200GB drive means you should be making a drive
image quick and doing logical file backups now to prep when, not if, you
replace that drive (and you might want to replace it before it continues
to die until when it gets so bad you lose everything on it that you
haven't backed up).

I'm not sure why you think you need one partition of 186GB to install
Windows. I have Windows XP Pro and *LOTS* of applications installed in
a 60GB partition and still have 38GB free. My data got moved into its
own partition of 60GB. If I had a 200GB drive, I'd have 80GB left to
install Linux (SuSE, in your case).

You need to fix your math. 186GB max - 62GB bad - 41GB used = 83GB, and
you said that you had 85GB free so that's about right. If CHKDSK is
reporting 62GB of bad sectors then Windows is NOT reporting 186GB for
the total partition size and should instead be reporting only 124GB
(186GB - 62GB = 124GB). So on a usable max partition size of 124GB that
is currently using 41GB then you have 83GB free. Just how big is SuSE?
I thought Windows was the pig for PC operating systems, not SuSE or
Linux. Why couldn't you resize the 124GB partition using, say,
PartitionMagic so it was 84GB in size (41GB used and 43GB still free)
for Windows and then leave room to create a 40GB partition for SuSE?

And why are you wanting to use a seriously damaged drive? 5% is
disappointing. 10% is intolerable. 30% would have me going ballistic
with the manufacture. Nowadays, I would expect an advertised 200GB hard
drive to give me a real 186GB of usable capacity. The spare sectors
will zero out the bad ones during manufacture to give the full
advertised capacity. CHKDSK can't see those. Thereafter I wouldn't
want to accrue more than 5 bad sectors a year (because that means any
data on them might not be recoverable) and then only for non-critical
use. Since a sector is 512 bytes, I'm talking about less than 3KB/year,
not 61GB. Actually I'd get nervous when the first bad sector showed up
and would watch to see how longer before the next one appeared.

How do you manage to get any sleep when 30% of the springs are sticking
through your mattress? Was your favorite movie a little disappointing
when you taped over 30% of the television's screen? Pop the caps off 30
of the keys on the 101-key keyboard, throw them away, and see how long
before you decide to get a new keyboard. Losing one key would be bad
enough, and worse if it was one you used a lot.