CHKDSK...

[billurie]

A question about chkdsk/r.....it reports 220KBytes in bad sectors.
I can spare 220KB out of 80 GB...that isn't the question. The
question is, does that mean they have been found bad, and have
been marked as bad so that no program will try to store anything
there? Is there a more rigorous fixing program available other
than 'third party' software?

 

[Michael Solomon \(MS-MVP\)]

They've likely been marked as bad but your real worry now should be the
health of the drive. In my experience, a bad sector report from chkdsk or
from scandisk is a precursor to drive failure. The next step is to use the
hard drive manufacturer's diagnostic tools to determine if the drive is
failing.

Get everything backed up, William.

 

[billurie]

You know me, Michael. I make it a practice to have at
least two full clones of my Master Drive at all times.
This is a new wrinkle on the old cloning problem. I perform
Drive Image and use the identical D-I as a source for
"Restore", using identical procedures, and one hard drive
accepts it and I have an exact clone......and a second
hard drive accepts it (and looks fine when run as a
slave), but will not boot out of the BIOS. That's the
drive on which chkdsk reports bad sectors. I will, as
you suggest, use the manufacturer's diagnostic tools
(Seagate).
Bill L.

 

[Crusty \(-: Old B@stard :-\)]

Bad sectors are bad sectors. Nothing can be written to them again. The
concern is this. The drive manufacturers leave a good amount of sectors "in
reserve". When sectors come up bad, the information is remapped to spare
sectors. Since you don't know how many spares there, you don't know when you
will cross the threshold and be left with a bad drive. If it is in warranty,
act now. Backup your important files to a secure media - for their
protection. The drive may fail tomorrow, or it may go on as it is - forever
(or at least till it wears out).

--
Regards,

Richard Urban

aka Crusty (-: Old B@stard

If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!

 

[billurie]

Bad sectors are bad sectors. Nothing can be written to them again. The
concern is this. The drive manufacturers leave a good amount of sectors "in
reserve". When sectors come up bad, the information is remapped to spare
sectors. Since you don't know how many spares there, you don't know when you
will cross the threshold and be left with a bad drive. If it is in warranty,
act now. Backup your important files to a secure media - for their
protection. The drive may fail tomorrow, or it may go on as it is - forever
(or at least till it wears out).

Warranty is, from my experience, very short when it's the
OEM. The drive manufacturers will give years when a drive
is bought direct, but only one year when it is
recorded in their records as having been sold with the
machine. OEM warranty ran out after a year. You splained
it about bad sectors' data being remapped. Thanks for the
help.

Bill Lurie

 

[DanS]

Warranty is, from my experience, very short when it's the
OEM. The drive manufacturers will give years when a drive
is bought direct, but only one year when it is
recorded in their records as having been sold with the
machine. OEM warranty ran out after a year. You splained
it about bad sectors' data being remapped. Thanks for the
help.

Bill Lurie

i know for a fact that if you have a seagate harddrive that comes in an OEM
machine, ie. a dell or a toshiba laptop, seagate does not honor any
warranty as it is up to the OEM.

if the warranty is of concern, ALWAYS buy a retail packaged drive.

 

[Michael Solomon \(MS-MVP\)]

Yeah, I guess it went without saying with regard to you, Bill.

But this being a peer to peer forum and having a lot of lurker's, as a
matter of form, I put the mention of backup in my response for all others
who might see the thread as well.

Good luck.