How to reset a bad sector on an NTFS volume?

[Bruce.]

XP SP3.

I had a hard drive with a few bad sectors. It never got worse so I ignored
them. Chksdsk /r /f marked them as bad and that was that.

Recently I did a major upgrade of my hardware. New motherboard, new drives,
just about everything except the chassis.

When I did the upgrade, I used True Image to clone the old PATA IDE hard
drive to the new SATA drive. Because I did an exact partition copy from the
old drive to new, those same sectors are still marked as bad, but no longer
need to be.

I've done a lot of googling but can find no way or utility to reset bad
sectors on an NTFS volume. I know doing an chkdsk /r /f again does not do
it. It will add new bad sectors but not retest old ones.

Partition Magic has a bad sector tester, but it only works on FAT16 or FAT32
volumes.

Anyone know of a way to reset a NTFS bad sector/cluster?

Bruce.

 

[John John (MVP)]

I don't know of any utilities available to do this, as far as I know you
have to use a disk editor and edit the $BadClus metadata file to remove
bad clusters from the file, not a trivial matter and not an exercise for
the faint of hearth! If you feel up to it it's the 8th file record in
the MFT. MFT records are 1K (or 2 sectors) in length. Of course, it
goes without saying that a disk edit mistake can lead to the loss of all
data on the disk.

John

 

[Bruce.]

I don't know of any utilities available to do this, as far as I know you
have to use a disk editor and edit the $BadClus metadata file to remove bad
clusters from the file, not a trivial matter and not an exercise for the
faint of hearth! If you feel up to it it's the 8th file record in the MFT.
MFT records are 1K (or 2 sectors) in length. Of course, it goes without
saying that a disk edit mistake can lead to the loss of all data on the
disk.

Ok, I very appreciate the information even if I don't yet have all the
pieces to the puzzle yet. Perhaps your information combined with others
will suggest a path.

I won't attempt it unless I can gain a lot more of confidence that I know
what I'm doing. I've edited the various FAT structures, but have virtually
no knowledge about NTFS.

Acronis makes what they call a Disk Editor. I'm going to ask them if their
program would in some way help.

Thanks for the information!

Bruce.

 

[Guest]

See /b

CHKDSK [volume[[path]filename]]] [/F] [/V] [/R] [/X] [/I] [/C] [/L[:size]]
[/B]


volume Specifies the drive letter (followed by a colon),
mount point, or volume name.
filename FAT/FAT32 only: Specifies the files to check for
fragmentation
..
/F Fixes errors on the disk.
/V On FAT/FAT32: Displays the full path and name of every
file
on the disk.
On NTFS: Displays cleanup messages if any.
/R Locates bad sectors and recovers readable information
(implies /F).
/L:size NTFS only: Changes the log file size to the specified
number
of kilobytes. If size is not specified, displays current
size.
/X Forces the volume to dismount first if necessary.
All opened handles to the volume would then be invalid
(implies /F).
/I NTFS only: Performs a less vigorous check of index
entries.
/C NTFS only: Skips checking of cycles within the folder
structure.
/B NTFS only: Re-evaluates bad clusters on the volume
(implies /R)

 

[Bruce.]

See /b

CHKDSK [volume[[path]filename]]] [/F] [/V] [/R] [/X] [/I] [/C] [/L[:size]]
[/B]


volume Specifies the drive letter (followed by a colon),
mount point, or volume name.
filename FAT/FAT32 only: Specifies the files to check for
fragmentation
.
/F Fixes errors on the disk.
/V On FAT/FAT32: Displays the full path and name of every
file
on the disk.
On NTFS: Displays cleanup messages if any.
/R Locates bad sectors and recovers readable information
(implies /F).
/L:size NTFS only: Changes the log file size to the specified
number
of kilobytes. If size is not specified, displays current
size.
/X Forces the volume to dismount first if necessary.
All opened handles to the volume would then be invalid
(implies /F).
/I NTFS only: Performs a less vigorous check of index
entries.
/C NTFS only: Skips checking of cycles within the folder
structure.
/B NTFS only: Re-evaluates bad clusters on the volume
(implies /R)

Uh oh. My chkdsk /? doesn't show the /B option. I'm on XP SP3. Did you
get those options from Vista?

Bruce.

 

[Bruce.]

See /b

CHKDSK [volume[[path]filename]]] [/F] [/V] [/R] [/X] [/I] [/C] [/L[:size]]
[/B]


volume Specifies the drive letter (followed by a colon),
mount point, or volume name.
filename FAT/FAT32 only: Specifies the files to check for
fragmentation
.
/F Fixes errors on the disk.
/V On FAT/FAT32: Displays the full path and name of every
file
on the disk.
On NTFS: Displays cleanup messages if any.
/R Locates bad sectors and recovers readable information
(implies /F).
/L:size NTFS only: Changes the log file size to the specified
number
of kilobytes. If size is not specified, displays current
size.
/X Forces the volume to dismount first if necessary.
All opened handles to the volume would then be invalid
(implies /F).
/I NTFS only: Performs a less vigorous check of index
entries.
/C NTFS only: Skips checking of cycles within the folder
structure.
/B NTFS only: Re-evaluates bad clusters on the volume
(implies /R)

Confirmed. /B is not a valid option for XP SP3.

Drat. That's exactly what I need.

Bruce.

 

[Guest]

Ah well. Scandisk is where Win95 did it (after setting a secret registry
key).

See /b

CHKDSK [volume[[path]filename]]] [/F] [/V] [/R] [/X] [/I] [/C]
[/L[:size]] [/B]


volume Specifies the drive letter (followed by a colon),
mount point, or volume name.
filename FAT/FAT32 only: Specifies the files to check for
fragmentation
.
/F Fixes errors on the disk.
/V On FAT/FAT32: Displays the full path and name of every
file
on the disk.
On NTFS: Displays cleanup messages if any.
/R Locates bad sectors and recovers readable information
(implies /F).
/L:size NTFS only: Changes the log file size to the specified
number
of kilobytes. If size is not specified, displays
current
size.
/X Forces the volume to dismount first if necessary.
All opened handles to the volume would then be invalid
(implies /F).
/I NTFS only: Performs a less vigorous check of index
entries.
/C NTFS only: Skips checking of cycles within the folder
structure.
/B NTFS only: Re-evaluates bad clusters on the volume
(implies /R)

Confirmed. /B is not a valid option for XP SP3.

Drat. That's exactly what I need.

Bruce.

 

[John John (MVP)]

Confirmed. /B is not a valid option for XP SP3.

Drat. That's exactly what I need.

http://www.fsys.nl/dfsee/index.php

I know/think that there is a way to do this with a Unix/Linux tool but I
can't find the information just right now.

John

 

[Bruce.]

http://www.fsys.nl/dfsee/index.php

I know/think that there is a way to do this with a Unix/Linux tool but I
can't find the information just right now.

Yes, I've seen the procedure and it seems way beyond my skill set. I know
nothing about Linux so the steps make little sense to me.

The good news is that due to a suggestion in the Acronis newsgroup, I was
able to use True Image to get the bad sectors reset. The trick is to
restore a True Image backup to a partition that is of *different size* that
the original. Because it has to resize the partition during the restore, it
figures the bad sector list is no longer valid so it resets it! Here's what
I did:

1) Use TI to make a image backup of C:
2) Use Partition Magic to make the C: drive smaller by 100GB (but still big
enough)
3) Use TI to restore the backup to the now smaller C:
4) Use Partition Magic to resize the C: back to the original size.
5) Do one last pass of chkdsk /r c: to look for *new* bad sectors.

And it worked perfectly! It took all night to do all those steps but I'm
down to zero bad sectors, exactly as I should be.

Thanks for the help!

Bruce.

 

[John John (MVP)]

The good news is that due to a suggestion in the Acronis newsgroup, I was
able to use True Image to get the bad sectors reset. The trick is to
restore a True Image backup to a partition that is of *different size* that
the original. Because it has to resize the partition during the restore, it
figures the bad sector list is no longer valid so it resets it! Here's what
I did:

1) Use TI to make a image backup of C:
2) Use Partition Magic to make the C: drive smaller by 100GB (but still big
enough)
3) Use TI to restore the backup to the now smaller C:
4) Use Partition Magic to resize the C: back to the original size.
5) Do one last pass of chkdsk /r c: to look for *new* bad sectors.

And it worked perfectly! It took all night to do all those steps but I'm
down to zero bad sectors, exactly as I should be.

Thanks for the help!

You're welcome, thanks for telling us how you overcame the problem.

John