Hard drive bad sectors, help?

G

Grendel

Hi,

I have had my Seagate 160GB drive (as recommend on here I believe) for only
a few weeks now and it's reporting bad sectors (in Event Viewer and using
the tools on the cd that came with it).

However, the bad sectors are not always in the same place, as sometimes I
can't copy certain files due to bad sectors and the copy fails, but other
times the copying is fine.

Is this normal behaviour for bad sectors? I would have thought that if
there was a bad sector, then I would never be able to copy the file.

It's also always only one partition (out of three). I'm thinking of just
formatting this partition and copying everything back on again.

Or should I just send it back?

Thanks,

Grendel.
 
S

spodosaurus

Grendel said:
Hi,

I have had my Seagate 160GB drive (as recommend on here I believe) for only
a few weeks now and it's reporting bad sectors (in Event Viewer and using
the tools on the cd that came with it).

However, the bad sectors are not always in the same place, as sometimes I
can't copy certain files due to bad sectors and the copy fails, but other
times the copying is fine.

Is this normal behaviour for bad sectors? I would have thought that if
there was a bad sector, then I would never be able to copy the file.

It's also always only one partition (out of three). I'm thinking of just
formatting this partition and copying everything back on again.

Or should I just send it back?

Thanks,

Grendel.

Download the seagate seatools program for putting on either a floppy or
burning to a cdrom. Make the disc. Put it in the drive. Restart your
computer and see what the full diagnostic testing reports. If you have
bad sectors, you need to return the drive for a replacement.

--
spammage trappage: replace fishies_ with yahoo

I'm going to die rather sooner than I'd like. I tried to protect my
neighbours from crime, and became the victim of it. Complications in
hospital following this resulted in a serious illness. I now need a bone
marrow transplant. Many people around the world are waiting for a marrow
transplant, too. Please volunteer to be a marrow donor:
http://www.abmdr.org.au/
http://www.marrow.org/
 
J

Jan Alter

Download the seagate seatools program for putting on either a floppy or
burning to a cdrom. Make the disc. Put it in the drive. Restart your
computer and see what the full diagnostic testing reports. If you have bad
sectors, you need to return the drive for a replacement.

From my perspective you couldn't get any better advice.
 
J

John Doe

Grendel said:
I have had my Seagate 160GB drive (as recommend on here I
believe) for only a few weeks now and it's reporting bad sectors
(in Event Viewer and using the tools on the cd that came with
it).

Bad sectors are usually very bad. Hopefully you have a copy of any
important data on another disk or on removable media.
However, the bad sectors are not always in the same place,

If you are really talking about bad sectors, that sounds very very
bad.

If you want more critical opinions, the best group for hard disk
drives is probably this one.

comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage

Good luck.
 
G

Grendel

Thanks for all the replies. I couldn't create a bootable floppy cos I
haven't used the floppy drive for so long that it's sat on the loft
somewhere.

I did however boot from the cd, which reported *lots* of bad sectors.

I have requested an RMA, so it looks like it'll have to go back (after I try
to copy off what I need and wipe it clean).

Thanks,

Grendel.
 

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