bad sectors, continued

[Roland]

Hi,
me again with my questions on bad sectors.
If I found bad sectors with the software of the manufacturer, but chkdsk
doesn't find any bad sectors,
can I transmit this information to WindowXP?
Does the OS keep a list of bad blocks somewhere? a list that I could edit
manually?
TIA.

 

[Roland]

Thanks.

 

[R. C. White]

Hi, Roland.

Hard drives have improved a lot in recent years. One of the improvements is
that they come with "spare" sectors. When a bad sector is identified, the
disk firmware just quietly remaps one of the spares into its place and marks
the bad one so that it won't be used again. This happens without our even
knowing it. Most of us think our drives have no bad sectors, but that's
only because the bad ones have been remapped and we never see them.

That's my non-technical explanation. There are several hard drive gurus who
check in here often. Maybe one of them can give a better explanation for
both of us. ;<)

RC