Sweet! I just got 4 bad sectors.

[tweakboy]

LOL, just happened, lol that WDC SE has a heart of gold,

You can fix bad sectors with HDD Generater. Will let you know if or when I fix the bad sectors.


BTW guys Ive done this before, Fix bad sectors,, with a app called HDD Generater.... anyhow.. lets see....

 

[Burner27]

Does it actually fix the bad sectors or remap them? I know of no utility that can 'fix' a bad sector.

 

[GotNoRice]

Can't you do the same thing using chkdsk /r ?

 

[tweakboy]

Ok I repaired 11 bad sectors the HDD Regenetor app on this 320GB took 4 and half hours to find all the bad sectors and repair them. Now its clean,, sweet!

 

[tweakboy]

Can't you do the same thing using chkdsk /r ?

NOPE You cant. chkdsk does not fix bad sectors,, once its bad its bad until you use a app like I did. chkdsk will show you the errors tho thats it.

 

[Selenium_Glow]

I re-read the definition of bad sectors here...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_sector

And now I think the application mentioned by OP simply forced the HDD to remap the bad sector to some spare sectors of the drive... or something like that.

 

[mikeymikec]

NOPE You cant. chkdsk does not fix bad sectors,, once its bad its bad until you use a app like I did. chkdsk will show you the errors tho thats it.

Partially wrong.

"No software utility can fix a hardware problem" is something I think we can safely all agree on - a software utility might help work around a hardware problem, but not outright fix it.

chkdsk /r checks for bad sectors and attempts to recover data from them and remap the sector so the original (faulty) area does not get re-used. However, there is a possibility that in this scenario, chkdsk can't recover data or remap the sector but some other app can.

In my experience, it is quite common that when a disk develops bad sectors that the problem is going to get steadily worse. Occasionally people notch up a few bad sectors by subjecting the disk to physical shock (and that's the end of it).

If my main PC's HDD developed bad sectors, I would put a new disk on my list of things to buy when I have the money. If my server's disk developed bad sectors, I would want to replace it immediately. Personally I think it depends on your need for a computer as to whether you replace the disk sooner or later or wait for it to cause you more problems, just bear in mind that if you go for the last option, it might fail in an extremely inconvenient way (such as a complete disk failure or developing a bad sector on a system registry file - and I haven't yet figured out how to manually restore an old registry file on Vista/7 when I only have access to the file system - I can do it on XP).

 

[murphyc]

chkdsk /r will do sector reads and if the disk reports an error, the file system will try to recover the information on the sector and move it to a good sector; but almost always the disk will not report an error even if the sector has read problems, so long as ECC corrects the error.

So I personally would not use chkdsk /r - this feature predates firmware managing disk sectors logically.

What you want to use is the SMART extended test, which will mark faulty LBA's, and then you can attempt to recover the data on them if you want. Only during a persistently failing write operation will the firmware remove the sector from use (i.e. it no longer has an LBA). This is why it's wise to zero drives periodically, as during a that write operation, any persistent write failure will prompt the drive firmware to remove such sectors from use.

It's faster and more effective to use the ATA Secure Erase feature, which will zero even reserved sectors (ones without LBAs, either bad sectors removed from use or never used sectors).