Program that fixes bad sectors

[vold]

i have a lot of bad sectors on a partition of my drive and have a lot of data corrupted. i need to know what program can recover the data and fix the bad sectors. thx

 

[vold]

s

 

[JimRaynor]

Ummm I may be wrong but to my knowledge you can't repair a bad sector.

To my knowledge a bad sector is actually physical damage on the hard drive.. I could be wrong though.

 

[Ryoga]

Yes, a bad sector is a part of the HDD that is physically no longer accessible to the system. The only "solution" is to reformat the drive (not quickformat) so that the sectors can be maked as bad. However, bad sectors tend to grow over time and corrupt more sections of the HDD. Your best bet is to simply replace the drive as it is no longer a reliable storage device.

You can try a low-level format of the drive using the HDD manufacturers tools, but most of those no longer do a true LLF but simply zero-fill the drive.

 

[vold]

it didnt have any bad sectors when i first formatted it. when i set it up in partitions, some bad sectors came up on only 1 partition

 

[Looney]

Doesnt' matter... if it's a bad sector, you can't fix it.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: Ryoga
Yes, a bad sector is a part of the HDD that is physically no longer accessible to the system. The only "solution" is to reformat the drive (not quickformat) so that the sectors can be maked as bad. However, bad sectors tend to grow over time and corrupt more sections of the HDD. Your best bet is to simply replace the drive as it is no longer a reliable storage device.

You can try a low-level format of the drive using the HDD manufacturers tools, but most of those no longer do a true LLF but simply zero-fill the drive.

There is software that purports to read and attempt to re-construct a "bad" sector, from methodically re-reading the data multiple times, with the HD firmware's sector error-correction turned *off*.

Check out SpinRite 6 (recently released), and there is also some (Russian?) software, I think it's called "PC-"(something)" 3000".

But it really depends on how "bad" the sector is. If the servo-positioning information is missing for some sector(s), then the drive won't even be able to properly seek to the position of the user data sectors, whether or not they are themselves intact.

In general, try to keep HDs cool and vibration-free as much as possible, as extremes of both (heat and vibration) can cause "soft" sector errors, in which the data is written in a way that is later unreadable.

 

[Zepper]

Yup, SpinRite can test drives within its design capacity to make sure the sectors really are bad (the highest level of testing can take a really long time on today's huge drives). If they are not, then S-R will return them to service. If the drive has 'spare' sectors it may be able to swap them in for the bad ones. S-R is not cheap but a worthwhile tool for a techie's kit! Up until this version, S-R fit on one diskette with plenty of room to spare - ain't it amazing what assembly language can do! I'll have to stop by http://www.grc.com and check out the new version - I haven't been there in a while. Unfortunately, at least some of the data will likely remain corrupt even if S-R can put some sectors back into service. Probably spitting into the wind - but... BACKUP, BACKUP, BACKUP - ever heard of it?

. And Hitachi's Drive Fitness Test utility can test most drives to see if it's really bad, but I don't think it can return good sectors that are marked bad back into service. There used to be a parameter in M$'s Format program that would cause it to recheck "marked bad" sectors, but I don't know if it is still available - it has been so long since I've had a bad sector... Assuming you don't want any of the data on that partition, it might be worth checking into the FORMAT parameters. I just checked and it was /C in the format program that came with Win98SE.
.bh.

Where's the :sun: ?

 

[JackHawksmoor]

Just to warn you, modern hard drives have reserved areas and all kinds of tricks to hide bad sectors from the OS. If bad sectors start showing up, that probably means the drive is REAAAAAAAALY in bad shape. I wouldn't trust it personally.

 

[THUGSROOK]

you can erase the "tag" of a bad sector then reformat the drive and hope everything is ok.
id check it with the manufacters test software and DOS scandisk before using it tho.

 

[THUGSROOK]

FORMAT drive: [/Switches]

/V[:label] Specifies a volume label. If the /V switch is omitted, or label is not specified, a prompt for a volume label is displayed after formatting is completed.
If no volume label is required, the prompt can be avoided by specifying: /V:""
If a label is specified and more than one disk is formatted in a session, all of the disks will be given the same volume label.
/Q "Quick" format of a previously formatted disk.
The disk's file allocation table (FAT) and root directory are deleted but it is not scanned for bad areas.
/S Copies system files to the formatted disk (to make a boot disk).
/C Tests clusters that are currently marked "bad." By default, if a disk contains clusters that have been marked as "bad", FORMAT does not retest the clusters; it simply leaves them marked "bad".
/U Unconditional format. This switch was instituted in Dos 5 along with the "Unformat" command. In Dos 7.x the Unformat command has been dropped and all formatting is unconditional. This switch is therefore redundant but possibly maintained so that batch files written with it will not fail.¹
/AUTOTEST Formatting proceeds without further user input or warning messages. All sectors previously marked bad on the hard drive are retested (i.e. equivalent to including the /C switch)². The AUTOTEST switch can be used in conjunction with the /U, /S, and /F switches. It is not compatible with /Q (causing an error message) and /V is ignored.
/BACKUP Not sure what this does. Seems to be similar to /AUTOTEST except that it asks for a Volume label, and displays data on number of bytes available, etc. Haven't tried it with c: drive so don't know whether it warns before formatting a hard drive.
/SELECT Not sure what this does - but it seems to "unformat" a disk. Anyway, it renders the disk a "non-system disk" (which can be reformatted).

 

[redbeard1]

There is two different types of bad spots. A physical bad spot and a software bad spot.

Just to warn you, modern hard drives have reserved areas and all kinds of tricks to hide bad sectors from the OS. If bad sectors start showing up, that probably means the drive is REAAAAAAAALY in bad shape. I wouldn't trust it personally.

This is a great explanation of how hard drives work. The drive makers extended test will tell you if it is starting create this type of hardware bad spots. Like he said, if it is marking real bad spots, it''s time to replace the drive

There are some programs out there that supposedly can read the SMART info from the hard drive and tell you how much the drive has pulled from service.

Software bad spots usually come from crashing programs (windows?). A format will usually clear them. Spinrite will fix them. The drive makers "low level" format, or zero fill, or wipe can usually clear them, though this wipes the whole drive, not just one partition. Partition Magic used to have a test and restore bad spot feature.

 

[yhelothar]

You should never have to do low level format on a drive. RMA it... Only LLF it if the warranty is over.