Computer question (sort of OT)

[pdlstl]

Can anyone direct me to a forum(s) where I can ask questions regarding Scandisk bad sectors etc.?

I hope no one minds but I'm going to post my question here in the event someone here can help.

My PC is operating but not correctly. When I run Scandisk, here is the message I get:

Is the "bytes in bad sectors" telling me my HD is fixing to head south?

It won't do a restore/recovery with the HP disks supplied with my PC.

Thank you in advance,

Earl

 

[Ethan Winer]

Earl,

> Is the "bytes in bad sectors" telling me my HD is fixing to head south? <

No. All hard disks have some bad sectors due to irregularities in the magnetic coating. My understanding is that modern drives hide the bad sectors entirely - even from the operating system - but I think older drives identify them. Either way, they are marked as bad before the manufacturer even ships the drive, so they are never used anyway.

> It won't do a restore/recovery with the HP disks supplied with my PC. <

I don't have any advice for that. What error message do you get?

--Ethan

 

[Eurythmic]

This is a current hard drive, though. 60GB? That isn't old. Indeed, all hard drives have bad sectors - but if the drive isn't mapping around those sectors transparently to you and Windows, there's a problem.

Do whatever you can to back up your data immediately, and if the drive is under warranty, get it replaced. A tech support operator may tell you that all drives have bad sectors. Don't accept that answer, as you should see zero bad sectors on a modern hard drive when you do a Scandisk. You need to receive a new drive.

For a much better explanation, read this:

http://www.pcguide.com/ts/x/comp/hdd/errorsBadSectors-c.html

 

[RWhite]

Eurythmic is 100% right. In the old days (10 years ago) bad sectors on a hard drive were normal and accepted. This is no longer the case. On a new drive like your 60 gig there are only two reasons you would have bad sectors. One is that indeed the drive is "headed south" and is begining to suffer hardware failure. The other is that sometimes an operating system failure or crash can leave bad sectors on a drive. The later is more of a software issue.

The only 100% accurate way I know of to detirmine which problem you have is to back up the drive, then run FDISK or another utility to completely errase the partition information. Then re-partition it and format it, preferably using the FORMAT command from the comand prompt. If there are "hard" errors on the drive they will almost certainly show up when you try to format the drive. I'm assuming you are using Windows 98 - your scandisk screen capture looks like 98. Note that if you just re-format the drive without repartitioning, it will simply save the list of "bad" sectors and they will remain there.

Of course the hard part on all this is "back up the drive". If this is your only PC, and it has only one drive, then the best you can probably do is back up your data and look forward to re-installing everything. If you have another drive to copy to, you could use a product like Ghost or Drive Image. However Ghost is pretty fussy about your source drive not having any errors on it, so this may not work anyway.

As for your restore disk not working, I would need more information.