"Bad sectors" on drive.

[Guest]

The problem is this instance is that XP has marked out about half of a 250 GB
drive as either "bad sectors" or "system files." In fact, I have verified
that this area of the drive is NOT bad, and the drive has no physical damage
whatever, by ghosting the current XP install to another drive, formatting the
drive, and running extensive diagnostics on it. The drive is formatted as
NTFS. This situation arose after a motherboard change (different chipset)
and immediate repair install of XP as suggested by many sources.

I have, so far:

1. Attempted the usual repairs by booting from the XP CD and using the
recovery console.

2. Attempting to use a fairly complex Linux procedure as described at
http://www.bodden.de - this failed.

3. Attempting to convert the volume to FAT32 with Partition Magic so that I
could perform a bad sector retest. The volume will not convert.

4. Searching Google for months in hope of a solution without success.

I can, of course, fix this by formatting the drive and reinstalling all
applications. I would prefer not to do this, mainly because I'm a bit
stubborn and I want to find a more elegant solution to the problem.

The drive works perfectly, but I have a lot of unusable space as of now.

Thanks in advance for any and all help !

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

The problem is this instance is that XP has marked out about half of a 250 GB
drive as either "bad sectors" or "system files." In fact, I have verified
that this area of the drive is NOT bad, and the drive has no physical damage
whatever, by ghosting the current XP install to another drive, formatting the
drive, and running extensive diagnostics on it. The drive is formatted as
NTFS. This situation arose after a motherboard change (different chipset)
and immediate repair install of XP as suggested by many sources.

I have, so far:

1. Attempted the usual repairs by booting from the XP CD and using the
recovery console.

2. Attempting to use a fairly complex Linux procedure as described at
http://www.bodden.de - this failed.

3. Attempting to convert the volume to FAT32 with Partition Magic so that I
could perform a bad sector retest. The volume will not convert.

4. Searching Google for months in hope of a solution without success.

I can, of course, fix this by formatting the drive and reinstalling all
applications. I would prefer not to do this, mainly because I'm a bit
stubborn and I want to find a more elegant solution to the problem.

The drive works perfectly, but I have a lot of unusable space as of now.

Thanks in advance for any and all help !

The problem could be caused by an inappropriate disk type
setting in the BIOS (LBA/Large/whatever). I recommend you
try them one by one.

 

[R. McCarty]

What vendor, model and interface type (PATA/SATA) is the drive ?
Have you tried connecting a different power tap to it ? Also you might
want to use Everest Home Edition to monitor it's thermal conditions.
If you have PQMagic, I would shrink the active partition to a smaller
size, leaving the remainder as unallocated space. Create a new partition
using the unallocated space. If that partition is clean, then you could
remove it and then re-size you active partition to the full drive size.

 

[Guest]

Thanks. Unfortunately, I have verified that is not the problem - I should
have put that in the original post. Additionally - various utilities
identify the unusable area as either "system files" or simply "bad." Chkdsk
identifies NO bads sectors at all.

 

[Guest]

This is a Maxtor 250 GB PATA drive. Power seems nominal but I have tried a
different power connector with no change. Temp is nominal with the drive
running in a cage with several others and 3 80MM fans blowing ambient air on
all drives. I just checked actual drive temp and it reports 26 C at idle.

The idea of shrinking the existing partition with PQM is excellent, however,
I have found that PQM thinks that the unusable area is part of the existing
partition and will not allow me to shrink it past that point, thus making it
impossible to delete or otherwise modify the unusable area. The drive now
consists of one large NTFS partition broken down about like this:

25 GB is actual OS, data, and programs.

107 GB is unusable area

Remainder is usable area.

 

[R. McCarty]

Thanks for the prompt/concise follow-up.

Are you using Partition Magic from within Windows or it's DOS
Boot Floppy mode ? I have version 8(.01?) and only run it from
a Bootable CD-R. Your version should have the provision to
make a bootable Floppy set (1-OS, 2-App). If you can create &
use a DOS-Mode PQMagic session, I would do a "Check for
Errors" on your existing Active Partition. Also, running PQMagic
from a DOS-Boot will locate and indicate any Partition Table
errors, that the Windows run won't.
I would also check your BIOS settings for the IDE controllers &
make sure detection is Auto. Is this drive operating as a Master
without a "Slaved" unit ? I'm sure you've checked the jumpers,
but some drives have a somewhat convoluted Jumper mapping.
Finally, if all else fails you might install the drive in another PC &
see if you can perform disk management on it. You may have
some type of BIOS interaction that's behind all this.

 

[Yves Leclerc]

What version of XP had you use to set up this drive? If you had used a
version of XP before Service Pack 1, XP did not understand nor have the
controls for the hard drives greater that 137GB. Service Pack 1 has the
fix in it. You would need to slipstream Service Pack 1, or 2, onto your XP
install CD (create a new CD) and possible re-formt your hard drive.

 

[Guest]

Tried PM from DOS - identifies no errors, will not permit resize to exclude
"bad" area.

BIOS identifies drive properly relative to size/type/ide controllers.

Not sure what you mean by "drive management" in another machine ?

Off to work - will check thread in about 6- 10 hours - thanks VERY much!

________________________________________________________________

 

[Guest]

Sorry - additionally, drive is operating a s master with another HD as slave.
Jumpering is proper as far as I can tell.

_________________________________________________________________

 

[Z]

The problem is this instance is that XP has marked out about half of a 250 GB
drive as either "bad sectors" or "system files." In fact, I have verified
that this area of the drive is NOT bad, and the drive has no physical damage
whatever, by ghosting the current XP install to another drive, formatting the
drive, and running extensive diagnostics on it. The drive is formatted as
NTFS. This situation arose after a motherboard change (different chipset)
and immediate repair install of XP as suggested by many sources.

You can continue to use it and maybe it'll be fine, or you can replace
the drive. With the price of hard drive capacity these days, I'd
definitely replace the drive and just tuck it in a drawer, maybe to use
for those times when you need temp storage for a few hours or days.

 

[Guest]

There is nothing physically wrong with the drive. I can easily solve this
problem by formatting and reinstalling. What I am trying to do here is to
solve a software problem.

 

[Ron Martell]

The problem is this instance is that XP has marked out about half of a 250 GB
drive as either "bad sectors" or "system files." In fact, I have verified
that this area of the drive is NOT bad, and the drive has no physical damage
whatever, by ghosting the current XP install to another drive, formatting the
drive, and running extensive diagnostics on it. The drive is formatted as
NTFS. This situation arose after a motherboard change (different chipset)
and immediate repair install of XP as suggested by many sources.

I have, so far:

1. Attempted the usual repairs by booting from the XP CD and using the
recovery console.

2. Attempting to use a fairly complex Linux procedure as described at
http://www.bodden.de - this failed.

3. Attempting to convert the volume to FAT32 with Partition Magic so that I
could perform a bad sector retest. The volume will not convert.

4. Searching Google for months in hope of a solution without success.

I can, of course, fix this by formatting the drive and reinstalling all
applications. I would prefer not to do this, mainly because I'm a bit
stubborn and I want to find a more elegant solution to the problem.

The drive works perfectly, but I have a lot of unusable space as of now.

Thanks in advance for any and all help !

Have you tried running the drive manufacturer's diagnostic utility on
that drive? That would be my first step. Also make sure that
S.M.A.R.T. is enabled in the computer's BIOS setup.

Good luck

Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca

In memory of a dear friend Alex Nichol MVP
http://aumha.org/alex.htm

 

[Guest]

Yes,I have done both of these things. There is nothing physically wrong with
this drive, but XP thinks there is.

 

[Guest]

Thanks for your help. This is XP SP2. The drive size is identified correctly.