Good Format Program for Hard Disk with Some Bad Clusters

[jaugustine]

Hi,

I have a spare 20G HDD I want to use for non-important "stuff".

When I formatted it using a Windows 98se floppy boot disk, the format
program encountered some bad clusters. Unfortunately, it attempts to
"recover" the bad cluster(s) which takes a long time. I prefer the format
program to "mark" the problem cluster(s) as "Bad", and proceed. I aborted
the format process because it was taking too long.

Note: There are no "switches" (/) in the format command that modify the
"recover" action.

Do you know of a good format program I can download that allows me
to format this hard disk without trying to "recover" problem clusters?

Thank You in Advance, John

PS, Remove "ine" from my email address

 

[Joel]

Hi,

I have a spare 20G HDD I want to use for non-important "stuff".

Toss it to a dumpter see if it will work <bg>. Since you should be able
to get a 1TB for around $60-70 (when onsale), and cheaper on smaller HD. I
would suggest not to bother with that 20G

When I formatted it using a Windows 98se floppy boot disk, the format
program encountered some bad clusters. Unfortunately, it attempts to
"recover" the bad cluster(s) which takes a long time. I prefer the format
program to "mark" the problem cluster(s) as "Bad", and proceed. I aborted
the format process because it was taking too long.

Note: There are no "switches" (/) in the format command that modify the
"recover" action.

Do you know of a good format program I can download that allows me
to format this hard disk without trying to "recover" problem clusters?

Thank You in Advance, John

PS, Remove "ine" from my email address

I haven't used the util for ages to know if there is any available at the
moment, but decades ago, I do remember there were programs to MARK the bad
sector(s) prevending writing to it.

And I guess after marking all bad sectors your 20GB will turn into 10GB
which is safe to store the important stuff. And here I just tossed away
several 100-250GB after sitting in the corner taking room and collecting
dirt for ages.

 

[Nicholas Dreyer]

This may be more than you want, but for non-linux systems (linux, of
course has everything you want for free), BootitNG is a tool that is hard
to beat and comes at a quite reasonable price. Check out

http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/comparison-grid.htm

Good luck, Nick