How to fix bad sectors?

[usstuscon12]

Please help, my hard drive has developed bad sectors everywhere for some unknown reason...it's a IBM 60GXP Deskstar 60 GB HD. It runs fine, but when I add more things to the hard drive such as downloads...I get an Illegal Operation message...anything I download, and some applications somehow get the same message...yet the operating system is fine. What I'm wondering is that why doesn't Scandisk detect them b4 I install the operating system? And try to fix them? Also now, when I run Scandisk, it will run, and then stop....then restart again, then the entire computer locks-up except the mouse pointer which is still moving. But they happen so suddenly...such as I may turn off the computer @ 7:00 @ night...then turn it back on 30 minutes later only to find that the downloaded programs don't work...but they did...30 minutes ago. Please help, any utilities out there to fix these bad sectors? Also would a low-level format work? Thanks.



Oliver

 

[HappyPuppy]

If you believe you have bad sectors, go to:

http://www.storage.ibm.com/hdd/support/download.htm

and download the IBM Drive Fitness Test. It will tell you if your hard drive is going bad. If it is, you don't want to keep wasting time with it. RMA it.

 

[RudeBoie]

You can't actually fix bad sectors, but you can mark them to be skipped over when writing and reading.