Hello.... Well, I don't know if this is the right forum to post but anyway I have a bad sector on my hard disk. I've tried the Windows XP built-in check disk, chkdsk /r and chkdsk /f, but I don't exactly know what they do. I assume one recovers the file, the other one fixes the problem, although it doesn't seem to do anything and there's still a bad sector on the HD. I know it's probably easier to just get a new Hard Disk since it's fairly inexpensive nowadays but the HD is still working (aside from random restarting if I write something into it) and I don't feel like spending money on this if it can be contained or better yet fixed. So if anyone knows a solution or a good guide on this, I'm listening. Thanks..
I went to the western digital website, but I didn't find the low-level formatter. Instead I found this "HDD Low Level Format Tool 2.36.1181" at softpedia. Is it the same? Is there anything that's non-destructive because I don't have another HD to back-up my data to but I'll keep this in mind. Thanks for the quick response though =)
that tool might work but will have to backup info to cd's or dvd's as low level format destroys all data. is also possible is a software corruption that is causing that bad spot as i ran into that once. did a regular format not a low level format & bad spot was gone.
FYI, although all drives have bad sectors, having more than a few bad sectors that appear visible to the OS means your drive is about to go. I wouldn't low-level your drive. Although that might recover that sector/cluster, there's a good chance that sector failed for a reason. At least with that spot marked as bad (be it by the OS or the drive hardware itself), it there is actually a physical defect in those bad sector, then data won't be written to it. Media fails for a lot of reasons - demagnetization of the platters, head shifting, physical damage, etc. I wouldn't play games with it. Especially since a few bad sectors - even a few bad clusters - make up a negligible percentage of your total disk space. If so many are going bad that it does eat up a noticeable percentage of your disk space, you need a new drive.
I understand about 70% of that. =/ Anyway I see about 3400k bad sector out of my 160GB HD on check disk result, what does that actually say? Could there be more bad sector that are undetected and what do you think I should now? What's the different between the regular format and the low-level format?
A format will not necessarily fix any bad sector. Checkdisk in dos, or scandisk in windows will identify and mark bad sectors. My computer, pinky click for menu, properties, tools. You should know how to do this. Now run the scandisk thorough and let it run. It takes a long time. If the machine freezes up during this, do it a couple of times. Then start looking for a replacement drive.. Formatting destroys all data on a drive. Scandisk does not. Scandisk marks bad sectors so windows does not write to those sectors. 20% bad sectors is bad enough to replace. PERIOD
Okay, I slept too long. XP now calls scandisk checkdisk. heh heh. The process is the same though, just check both those boxes and let it run. Sorry I was out of date. G
