Fixing Up Bad Sectors

[Crism]

I've got a 160GB WD drive here that's got 50k of bad sectors on it. I was just wondering about a program that could either remove or relocate these sectors. The computer works fine otherwise. Would a simple chkdsk /f fix it?

 

[JEDIYoda]

it has been my experience with bad sectors that they cannot be moved or fixed....

but somebody else might know something different...

this was several years ago that I had to deal with bad sectors.

 

[Crism]

I heard of something that might be able to section them off and tell the hard drive not to try to write anything on it or something.

 

[Jeff7]

Reallocating them *might* be possible, but the thing is, new ones could appear at any point in the future. A drive that's developed bad sectors since it left the factory is due for a trip back to the factory, assuming it's still under warranty.

 

[corkyg]

Sometimes they can be "mapped" out. Sometimes bad sectors can be improved on or fixed with deep low level formatting by SpinRite 6. All drives have bad sectors, but the ones you buy, have them mapped out initially.

 

[0roo0roo]

its time to ditch the dying drive.

 

[pkme2]

I agree its time to get a replacement. Try to RMA it if you have any warranty on it. If not, you can use it as a backup until it fails.

 

[dunkster]

The drive is probably shot - you can attempt repair, but more bad sectors will probably reappear in a short time.

Safeguard any really critical data right now.

For repair, visit the Western Digital site, Support, faq and drill down to DLGDIAG for DOS for your drive model, in either the floppy or CD image version.

DLGDIAG will locate bad/weak storage areas, make repeated attempts to recover data from those areas, re-write recovered data to known-good areas, and modify the storage vector table to prevent the drive storing data to the bad/weak areas in the future. Any data it cannot recover is simply lost.

Good luck!

 

[camara120]

HDD Regenerator might be worth a shot. Says it can repair bad sectors related to magnetic errors. It has a free trial.

Let us know how it goes...