Any Hard Disc 'Bad Sector' repair programs?

O

old jon

John Latter said:
Hi,

Are there any freeware programs which can recover 'bad sectors'?

Thanks in advance,
John Latter

Model of an Internal Evolutionary Mechanism (based on an extension to
homeostasis) linking Stationary-Phase Mutations to the Baldwin Effect.
http://members.aol.com/jorolat/TEM.html

'Where Darwin meets Lamarck?' Discussion Egroup
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/evomech
Click to expand...

Can`t be done John. You could download `powermax` from the maxtor site, make
a boot disk and test the drive in DOS. This will give you an indication of
the condition of the drive. I`m afraid bad sectors are gone for good.
best wishes..J
 
M

Marten Kemp

old said:
Can`t be done John. You could download `powermax` from the maxtor site, make
a boot disk and test the drive in DOS. This will give you an indication of
the condition of the drive. I`m afraid bad sectors are gone for good.
best wishes..J
Click to expand...

Note about powermax: unlike the drive test software from other
manufacturers, powermax works on any drive, regardless of who
made it.

If you want to retrieve the data from bad sectors, I'm afraid
that jon is correct -- they're gone forever. If, on the other
hand, you want to delete the bad sectors powermax will remap
good sectors to the addresses of the bad ones, giving you a
"clean" drive that's very slightly smaller.
 
F

Franklin

On Mon 13 Jun 2005 15:43:29, Marten Kemp wrote:
Note about powermax: unlike the drive test software from other
manufacturers, powermax works on any drive, regardless of who
made it.

If you want to retrieve the data from bad sectors, I'm afraid
that jon is correct -- they're gone forever. If, on the other
hand, you want to delete the bad sectors powermax will remap
good sectors to the addresses of the bad ones, giving you a
"clean" drive that's very slightly smaller.
Click to expand...


Some people say that SpinRite can recover "semi-bad" sectors but I am
not so sure. And, worse still, it is rather expensive $$$ware.
 
R

Richard Steinfeld

derek said:
What if the sector "IS" bad?
Click to expand...

I'll bet that in many cases, it is indeed possible to recover the data
in sectors with sustandard magnetic strength. There's probably some
software out there that works with similar logic to our favorite Exact
Audio Copy. If so, I'd use such software to repeatedly chug through that
sector to retrieve the data, if possible. Then, of course, run Scandisk
to test and lock out the funky area.

Now whether there's freeware that does this, and whether it operates
sanely or is user-hostile: I don't know.

Richard
 
R

Rudolf Gerhard Höcherl

try a programm called llf.exe (low level format).You need a DOS-Start-Disk
with this DOS-Program and after you do the job, windows called you a factory
new HDD. Good luck.
Greetings
machinehead666
 
H

Howard Schwartz

Funny: There ia a program called revive.exe that does this for floppy
disks: salvages as much data as possible from bad sectors and moves
the data. It uses multiple reads of the disk to optomize this. Do
not see why such a program could not be written for a hard disk.
(Revive is an old, freeware dos program).
 
M

Marten Kemp

Franklin said:
On Mon 13 Jun 2005 15:43:29, Marten Kemp wrote:


Some people say that SpinRite can recover "semi-bad" sectors but I am
not so sure. And, worse still, it is rather expensive $$$ware.
Click to expand...

IIRC, SpinRite was okay at aggressive retries Back In The Old Days
of MFM and RLL drives where the controller logic was separate from
the drive. These days, I _think_ that IDE drives do the retries
themselves and software is unlikely to do any better.

Of course, YMMV. My experience with SpinRite was to optimize the
interleave on MFM drives, so I definitely could be wrong.
 
R

Richard Steinfeld

Howard said:
Funny: There ia a program called revive.exe that does this for floppy
disks: salvages as much data as possible from bad sectors and moves
the data. It uses multiple reads of the disk to optomize this. Do
not see why such a program could not be written for a hard disk.
(Revive is an old, freeware dos program).
Click to expand...

Yup.
That's exactly the idea I meant in my post.


I wonder if it's possible to read the hard disk with Revive.exe at the
dos level, and pull the data off to another disk, like a floppy. I'm
thinking that the actual low-magnetic data would be a very small chunk
-- a cunk that could easily fit on a floppy.

Richard
 
D

Doc

IIRC, SpinRite was okay at aggressive retries Back In The Old Days
of MFM and RLL drives where the controller logic was separate from
the drive. These days, I _think_ that IDE drives do the retries
themselves and software is unlikely to do any better.

Of course, YMMV. My experience with SpinRite was to optimize the
interleave on MFM drives, so I definitely could be wrong.
Click to expand...

Spinrite HAS "evolved" with the times. Version 6 now.
 
D

David

On Mon 13 Jun 2005 15:43:29, Marten Kemp wrote:



Some people say that SpinRite can recover "semi-bad" sectors but I am
not so sure. And, worse still, it is rather expensive $$$ware.
Click to expand...

(OT)
Is that still going? I last used it around 1994. It was brilliant then
so I presume it is still as good or better.
 
D

David

try a programm called llf.exe (low level format).You need a DOS-Start-Disk
with this DOS-Program and after you do the job, windows called you a factory
new HDD. Good luck.
Greetings
machinehead666
Click to expand...
Back up your data first.
 
A

Al Smith

Some people say that SpinRite can recover "semi-bad" sectors but I am
(OT)
Is that still going? I last used it around 1994. It was brilliant then
so I presume it is still as good or better.
Click to expand...

I sometimes haunt the Gibson newsgroups, so I can say that Steve
Gibson upgraded spinrite last year. Everyone says it's the cat's
pajamas.
 
D

David Wilkinson

I sometimes haunt the Gibson newsgroups, so I can say that Steve
Gibson upgraded spinrite last year. Everyone says it's the cat's
pajamas.
Click to expand...

I've used Spinrite from version 3.0 to the current 6.0. So far it's worked
as advertised.
 
J

Julian Cann

I've used Spinrite from version 3.0 to the current 6.0. So far it's worked
as advertised.
Click to expand...

Where can I download the freeware version please?

Jules
Brisbane Australia
 

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