Hard Drive BAD SECTORS

[Smacksmackums]

I just ran scandisk through my Windows ME boot disk. It took so long, I was pressing enter like a million times, actually more like 400 but it still was a total pain in the butt. It took pretty much all day of coming back to the comp to check again. Anyway, after it finished it told me that my hard drive had most likely suffered physical damage, most likely through a power outage, or something like that. I was pissed. Now my hard drive is riddled with errors/bad sectors or whatever and I'm wondering if a format will help sort things out or if I'm out of luck and need to buy a new hard drive.

Can someone help me out and tell me what I should do?

 

[corkyg]

A rash of bad sectors can occur for many reasons, including a power hiccup - or bumping the computer when the drive is accessing data. Anyway, IDE disks all have bad sectors and they are marked and mapped out so they are not used. If they are growing, then that is not good, and it may be prudent to replace the drive. Once ScnDisk or Norton Disk Doctor marks the bad spots, then they are not re-examined. Formatting is not a good idea because that can delete all the bad sector markings and you would have to do all that lengthy scanning all over again. Besides, it has no effect on bad sectors. In some cases, minor problems can be repaired, but it takes a long time using SpinRite 5 at maximum depth.

IBM has a pretty good utility that can rehab some HDDs when you run the long program. Look for Drive Fitness Test 3.0. But - be prepared to replace the drive.

 

[Smacksmackums]

Thanks for the reply corky g. I guess I'll try and keep a lookout on the "growth" of bad sectors, and if it gets horrible, then I'll have to replace my drive.

 

[exp]

If the drive is under warranty I would go ahead and RMA it. It's been my experience that bad sectors are virtually guaranteed to spread sooner or later. You can probably save yourself some future aggravation by acting now.