Any Hard Disc 'Bad Sector' repair programs?

[ozzy]

Where can I download the freeware version please?

Jules
Brisbane Australia

[OT] Although both Spinrite and Partition Magic may help you out in your
task, I have been using a freeware tools lately with EXCELLENT results
that someone on acf suggested.

PC Inspector File Recovery
http://www.pcinspector.de/file_recovery/uk/welcome.htm

Supported file systems: FAT 12/16/32, NTFS (used by hard disks, disks,
Smartmedia, Compact Flash, Memory Stick and others)

System requirements:
Microsoft® Windows® 95, 98, ME, NT, 2000 or XP

It managed to recover files that I thought were lost for good. Once
recovered, I reformatted the drive to re-detect the newly formed *bad
sectors* but there were too many of them for my personal comfort so I
trashed the drive.

Normally I would have tried one of payware solutions but decided to try
PC Inspector. I must admit I was shocked at how well it worked. Their
page claims that it will not work if the media is *physically* damaged
but it saved my files and that is all that mattered )

ozzy

 

[juliuslr]

X-No-Archive: yes

Almost related question: I have a 2.5" 9GB drive that has the
S.M.A.R.T. technology. Upon installation in my test laptop, it says
that the drive is about to fail. How does it know that and if the
failure is only limited to a certain sector, how can the bad sector(s)
be declared off limit so the drive can become usable again? Thanks.

PS: I understand and realize that I wouldn't put VALUABLE data on it,
but it would be good for test installation of OS or LINUX.... or
even for downloading and testing freeware and making sure it doesn't
add spam or virus to my "real" system.

 

[Franklin]

On Sun 03 Jul 2005 10:46:09, Julian Cann wrote:

Where can I download the freeware version please?

No freeware version of Spinrite exists. As I say (see above):

"worse still, it is rather expensive $$$ware"

ISTR it is about $80. Ugh!!!

 

[Duddits]

X-No-Archive: yes

Almost related question: I have a 2.5" 9GB drive that has the
S.M.A.R.T. technology. Upon installation in my test laptop, it says
that the drive is about to fail. How does it know that and if the
failure is only limited to a certain sector, how can the bad sector(s)
be declared off limit so the drive can become usable again? Thanks.

snip

http://www.drivehealth.com/smart.html

regards

Dud

 

[Duddits]

X-No-Archive: yes

Almost related question: I have a 2.5" 9GB drive that has the
S.M.A.R.T. technology. Upon installation in my test laptop, it says
that the drive is about to fail. How does it know that and if the
failure is only limited to a certain sector, how can the bad sector(s)
be declared off limit so the drive can become usable again? Thanks.

Better link
http://www.storagereview.com/guide2000/ref/hdd/perf/qual/featuresSMART.html

regards

Dud

 

[Howard Schwartz]

(e-mail address removed) wrote in @z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com:

Upon installation in my test laptop, it says
that the drive is about to fail. How does it know that and if the
failure is only limited to a certain sector, how can the bad sector(s)
be declared off limit so the drive can become usable again? Thanks.

There is a clever dos-based disk test program out there that tests
specifically for bad sectors and gives you an overall report. It
explains that hard disks contain an area of `spare sectors' they
use to map data to, as the disk itself finds sectors bad. By using
timing techniques, the test program figures out how much data has
already been mapped to this special area from bad or going bad sectors.
It can then report how far gone your disk is, in a more detailed way
than a `sector' scan.

I will have to dig out my old dos program disk to discover the name of
this handy utility.