fixing bad harddisk can fdisk remove bad sectors?

[Battousai1]

hi i have an old 1.7 GB seagate hard disk and has 256k of bad sectors in it and this harddrive had failed so many times but still can store and retrieve data, my question is how can I make the bad sectors and the bad parts of the harddisk dissapear? i mean all the bad parts be totally not recognized at all I know the common disk repair utility i.e. Scandisk, and alike, but can fdisk remove the bad sectors and make the harddisk not to read the bad sectors anymore or by decreasing the harddisk size?

 

[DIRTsquirt]

It is my understanding that scandisk will find the bad sectors and mark them as bad so the hard drive dont try to write to them.. in essense it does exactly what you are askin.. A failing drive is dangerous thing.. dont put anything on it thta you may need some day..

 

[GregMal]

I usually rely on the manufacturer's HD utilities to find and mark the
bad sectors. It's worked for me everytime..........Greg

 

[DaiShan]

yah seagate has some good utils, check their website

 

[Motero]

First try Seagate's website for a hard drive utility...I believe scandisk would do pretty much the same thing as well.

 

[networkman]

My work has an older model of this: HD Repair Station

This did cost right around the same price when we bought it, but it's paid for itself many times over since we've been able to repair drives long out of warranty.

 

[corkyg]

That HDD repair station really does a good job, but the cost requires a business environment where many potential jobs are available.

But the basic answer to the question asked is "No." FDISK does not repair bad sectors. In fact, it can eliminate the "fences" built by ScanDisk that place those "off limits."

The small size of the drive (1.7 GB) makes its value probably less than $20. The smallest drive commonly available now is 20 GB, and Newegg has those for $61-$62. I would get a new one and transfer any data from the old one and then trash it. That makes the most economic sense in the long run.