Which files belong to a bad sector?

[Guest]

My disk is dying - reporting bad blocks. I have created an image backup to
load my system onto a new disk. During the backup, the utility (Seagate
DiscWizard powered by Acronis) was unable to read one bad sector. I
instructed it to ignore the sector, in order to complete the backup. It
reported the sector number (93,828,253) which was unreadable.

I have old backups of files, which pre-date the disk errors, using the XP
backup utility. Is there any way of discovering which files correspond to the
bad sector, so I can replace them with earlier copies once I install the
image backup onto a new disk?

Thanks for any help you can provide...

 

[Vanguard]

in message

My disk is dying - reporting bad blocks. I have created an image
backup to
load my system onto a new disk. During the backup, the utility
(Seagate
DiscWizard powered by Acronis) was unable to read one bad sector. I
instructed it to ignore the sector, in order to complete the backup.
It
reported the sector number (93,828,253) which was unreadable.

I have old backups of files, which pre-date the disk errors, using the
XP
backup utility. Is there any way of discovering which files correspond
to the
bad sector, so I can replace them with earlier copies once I install
the
image backup onto a new disk?

Run "chkdsk /r".

 

[John Wunderlich]

My disk is dying - reporting bad blocks. I have created an image
backup to load my system onto a new disk. During the backup, the
utility (Seagate DiscWizard powered by Acronis) was unable to read
one bad sector. I instructed it to ignore the sector, in order to
complete the backup. It reported the sector number (93,828,253)
which was unreadable.

I have old backups of files, which pre-date the disk errors, using
the XP backup utility. Is there any way of discovering which files
correspond to the bad sector, so I can replace them with earlier
copies once I install the image backup onto a new disk?

Thanks for any help you can provide...

Get a neat little freebie called "DiskView".

Start it, click the Refresh button, and zoom into any sector you
want on your disk. Double-clicking a sector will tell you which
file is using that sector and the sectors occupied by that file.

<http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/FileAndDisk/DiskView.mspx>

HTH,
John

 

[Guest]

Thanks for taking the time to answer Vanguard.
I had already tried chkdsk - it reports a read failure during stage 4 but no
mention of which files are involved (Read failure with status 0xc000009c at
offset 0xb2cf57000 for 0x10000 bytes.). I couldn't find any recovery
fragments and it didn't repair anything.

 

[Guest]

Thanks John - great tip!
This little utility is excellent - I had no idea it existed. It did solve my
problem, though not without a bit more scouting around. The reason for this
is that DiskView deals in relative cluster number, where-as the backup
utility reported an absolute sector number. I subtracted the sectors occupied
by other partitions on the disc before C: to get a relative figure and used
"fsutil fsinfo ntfsinfo C:" to discover the bytes/cluster to covert to a
cluster number. And voila, the file corresponding to that cluster contained
the bad sector - I know this because I tried virus scanning it and it hung my
computer repeatedly trying to read the bad sector
Happily, the dud file isn't one that matters!
Anyway, thanks again for taking the time - much appreciated!

 

[John Wunderlich]

Thanks John - great tip!
This little utility is excellent - I had no idea it existed. It
did solve my problem, though not without a bit more scouting
around. The reason for this is that DiskView deals in relative
cluster number, where-as the backup utility reported an absolute
sector number. I subtracted the sectors occupied by other
partitions on the disc before C: to get a relative figure and used
"fsutil fsinfo ntfsinfo C:" to discover the bytes/cluster to
covert to a cluster number. And voila, the file corresponding to
that cluster contained the bad sector - I know this because I
tried virus scanning it and it hung my computer repeatedly trying
to read the bad sector Happily, the dud file isn't one that
matters! Anyway, thanks again for taking the time - much
appreciated!

I'm glad you have your answer.
Thanks for the feedback.
-- John