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Bad sector

A

ArisVer

Golden Member
Item, laptop with a 20G hard disk.

Laptop was overheated in the past and makes a clicking noise when it tries to read the certain sector. Sometimes it gets past, sometimes it gets stuck.

So i zero filled the drive. Tools reported "sector not found" (where it makes the noise).
What is the best i can do without getting a new hard drive?
I was thinking of leaving a blank space on the disk (about 1G) before and after the bad sector.
 
If you're talking about Windows, doing a full format in Windows _should_ find the bad sector(s) and mark them so that they don't get used. Doing your partition idea would work as long as the bad sectors don't grow, but that also means you have 2 partitions on an already small drive which would be annoying at best.

In Linux ext3 and ext4 have similar options, but other filesystems like XFS don't because they don't expect you to use such questionable drives.
 
The RAM memory is 384MB. I have Lubuntu on since yesterday. The sector is at about 3.2GB. I thought of /boot (256MB) and /swap (384MB, maybe more since i have available space) at the first GB of the drive, then leave a blank space until 5GB, and make the rest /root.

I left an empty space (4GB, almost 1GB away from the bad sector) and installed Win last week. It was getting stuck a little. When i made the space at 5GB it was almost ok. Still heard a click but only once or twice.

I will reinstall Lubuntu leaving at least 1.5GB empty space before and after. Can the installation disk or GPartedLive do this (leaving empty space)?
I am not sure if it can resize and leave a blank space.

Btw, Windows marked it, but was getting stuck. I also had another bad sector which was fixed, but this one does not seem to get well. And i was testing the drive for four days using a variety of tools.
 
4 days of testing is too long. You are far better off buying a cheap replacement, but if you insist, I would run any diagnosis software that the drive manufacturer provides.
 
I Had 2 Maxtor drives that did this exact same thing in the past and eventually they died... So, your best bet is to replace. Time is money so don't waste your time.
 
The laptop was a giveaway from my brother. He got a new one.
I am unemployed so time means not so much to me. Testing, one of the write tests took one and a half days.
Considering that is an old laptop i do not want to spent money on it. I did buy a small flexible keyboard for it since it's keyboard was fried.
It's use will be to watch movies on tv, to write cd/dvd, and as a spare os.
 
Cpu is Pentium III 1GHz. It should be enough.

I runned GParted_Live and got stuck. I have to reinstall.
 
Use the drive manufacturer's diagnostic utility to format the drive. If not available, surface scan with MHDD with the "Loop test/repair" option enabled.
 
I also used the Hitachi tools since its a Hitachi drive. It's a really bad sector.
I finally left about 4GB blank disk space and installed os. The idea is 'leave the heads far away from the bad sector'. Seems ok even though sometimes i hear the clicking noise. Looks like i will need a new drive soon.
 
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