bad sectors

  • Thread starter Thread starter Joe
  • Start date Start date
J

Joe

Hi all,
I wonder if anyone knows of a disk editing program that will allow user to
mark bad sectors manually. I used scandisk on old 3.2 gb hard drive and it
shows errors. The thing is it tries very hard to retry every difficult to
read sector. What I want to be able to do is mark 1 Mb before and 1 Mb
after a bad sector as bad so I won't be bothered any more with some other
bad sector found.

TIA

joe
 
Joe said:
Hi all,
I wonder if anyone knows of a disk editing program that will allow user to
mark bad sectors manually. I used scandisk on old 3.2 gb hard drive and it
shows errors. The thing is it tries very hard to retry every difficult to
read sector. What I want to be able to do is mark 1 Mb before and 1 Mb
after a bad sector as bad so I won't be bothered any more with some other
bad sector found.
Click to expand...

It is worth less than $3, if working properly, but signs are that it is not.

A 3.2 BG drive is of a vintage that should subtitute bad sectors
automagically.
If it it shows any it is probably dying badly inside.

Not even worth your time to remedy, let alone the risk of losing data later.
 
It is worth less than $3, if working properly, but signs are that it is not.

A 3.2 BG drive is of a vintage that should subtitute bad sectors
automagically.
If it it shows any it is probably dying badly inside.

Not even worth your time to remedy, let alone the risk of losing data later.
Click to expand...
</snip>

I'm afraid I agree with Terry.....

--
Regards

Steven Burn
Ur I.T. Mate Group
www.it-mate.co.uk

Keeping it FREE!

Disclaimer:
I know I'm probably wrong, I just like taking part ;o)
 
It is worth less than $3, if working properly, but signs are that it is
not.


</snip>

I'm afraid I agree with Terry.....
Click to expand...

Me too. Piece of junk. Chuck it, and save all that mental energy
for philosophical questions, such as how can I get laid.
 
Me too. Piece of junk. Chuck it, and save all that mental energy
for philosophical questions, such as how can I get laid.
Click to expand...

Thanks for replys, guys. I am using it to view movie trailers downloaded
off the Net. I don't care when it breaks down (too bad then). As long as
it works, though it is quite usable and fast. And if someone is selling
a 3.2 Gig hard drive for $3 I will buy ten ;). I used to copy files on
it on places where bad sectors were, make them hidden and put usefull
files around them and it worked quite OK for about a year (I bought it
for $20 in a comp. parts store 1 year ago for $20.00 (yes, $20!) When
it played the movies it was quite fine, till I accidentally fully
formatted it and lost those dummy files. Now either work it all over
again, or thinking of getting laid ;). I will use some disk writing
program gladly, though. It will educate me a little about bad and good
sector marking in a hd.

cheers

joe
 
Thanks for replys, guys. I am using it to view movie trailers downloaded
off the Net. I don't care when it breaks down (too bad then). As long as
it works, though it is quite usable and fast. And if someone is selling
a 3.2 Gig hard drive for $3 I will buy ten ;). I used to copy files on
it on places where bad sectors were, make them hidden and put usefull
files around them and it worked quite OK for about a year (I bought it
for $20 in a comp. parts store 1 year ago for $20.00 (yes, $20!) When
it played the movies it was quite fine, till I accidentally fully
formatted it and lost those dummy files. Now either work it all over
again, or thinking of getting laid ;). I will use some disk writing
program gladly, though. It will educate me a little about bad and good
sector marking in a hd.

cheers

joe
Click to expand...

Pay a visit to the HD manufacterers website and download their diagnostic
utility. That should also allow you to perform a low level format, which
*may* fix some of the bad sectors, and hide the rest so they can't be used
anymore.

--
Regards

Steven Burn
Ur I.T. Mate Group
www.it-mate.co.uk

Keeping it FREE!

Disclaimer:
I know I'm probably wrong, I just like taking part ;o)
 
Joe said:
Thanks for replys, guys. I am using it to view movie trailers downloaded
off the Net. I don't care when it breaks down (too bad then). As long as
it works, though it is quite usable and fast. And if someone is selling
a 3.2 Gig hard drive for $3 I will buy ten ;). I used to copy files on
it on places where bad sectors were, make them hidden and put usefull
files around them and it worked quite OK for about a year (I bought it
for $20 in a comp. parts store 1 year ago for $20.00 (yes, $20!) When
Click to expand...

that was a year ago
2004 Time is money is bytes : $36 per hour = 8 megabytes per second
( more or less depending how you value your time )
it played the movies it was quite fine, till I accidentally fully
formatted it and lost those dummy files. Now either work it all over
again, or thinking of getting laid ;). I will use some disk writing
program gladly, though. It will educate me a little about bad and good
sector marking in a hd.
Click to expand...

use format chkdsk and scandisk
clusters marked bad will not be used

with interleaving and head/track/cylinder mapping it is unlikely clusters
logically adjacent
will be physically near any defect

You have no way of knowing if the defect will grow or in what way
if particles it can spread at random
if zone it can go to the next track, and you cannot tell how far away that
is
in disk space

http://www.rwc.uc.edu/koehler/comath/42.html
 
X-No-Archive: yes

I wonder if anyone knows of a disk editing program that will allow user to
mark bad sectors manually. I used scandisk on old 3.2 gb hard drive and it
shows errors. The thing is it tries very hard to retry every difficult to
read sector. What I want to be able to do is mark 1 Mb before and 1 Mb
after a bad sector as bad so I won't be bothered any more with some other
bad sector found.
Click to expand...

Hi Joe

If you are a bit technically minded then your friend is Ranish who has
created Partition Manager.

It is not necessary to mark megabytes before and after a bad sector.
Ranish's PM has a verify facility that tells you at what cyliner the
bad sector is. Simply make the previous partition end a few cylinders
before that and start a new partition after the sylinder containing
the bad sector.

I have always been doing this in spite of the fact I have several new
drives with me. Just insane pleasure in extending drives useability as
long as possible.

I am just now using a 2gb drive that went bad an year back and I am
still using it successfully though I had to eliminate about 700mb :-(

I have always felt that marking a single sector/cluster bad and
continuing to use adjacent clusters promotes fast deterioration. There
is good in entirely eliminating a couple of cylinders before and after
and this is good for the read head..

One thing - the hard disk must be recognized by the BIOS.

Hope this helps

--
Sandy Archer
Reply to newsgroup only

For links to Harddisk management freeware
http:/members.tripod.com/~diligent/harddisk.htm
 
Ardent said:
Hi Joe

If you are a bit technically minded then your friend is Ranish who has
created Partition Manager.

It is not necessary to mark megabytes before and after a bad sector.
Ranish's PM has a verify facility that tells you at what cyliner the
bad sector is. Simply make the previous partition end a few cylinders
before that and start a new partition after the sylinder containing
the bad sector.
Click to expand...

A drive says 16 heads, inside it has 3 platters, 6 heads.
A head is 1/50th of the platter width, a few hundred logical cylinders
IF they are mapped consecutively. You don't avoid flying over
the defects just by mapping out a few cylinders.
A cluster 3,5,12 cylinders away logically may be physically
right next to the defect, whereas the next logical cluster may be on a
different physical platter.
 
Ardent said:
X-No-Archive: yes



Hi Joe

If you are a bit technically minded then your friend is Ranish who has
created Partition Manager.

It is not necessary to mark megabytes before and after a bad sector.
Ranish's PM has a verify facility that tells you at what cyliner the
bad sector is. Simply make the previous partition end a few cylinders
before that and start a new partition after the sylinder containing
the bad sector.

I have always been doing this in spite of the fact I have several new
drives with me. Just insane pleasure in extending drives useability as
long as possible.

I am just now using a 2gb drive that went bad an year back and I am
still using it successfully though I had to eliminate about 700mb :-(

I have always felt that marking a single sector/cluster bad and
continuing to use adjacent clusters promotes fast deterioration. There
is good in entirely eliminating a couple of cylinders before and after
and this is good for the read head..

One thing - the hard disk must be recognized by the BIOS.

Hope this helps
Click to expand...
</snip>

Next thing you know, you've ended up with good parts marked as bad because
they happened to be "physically next to" (in Ranish's view) the bad cluster.

The best thing to do if you have a drive with bad clusters, is replace the
drive. It's only going to get worse, and putting it off is not a good idea
as, when it eventually goes, it's most likely going to take all your lovely
data with it, and all because you didn't prepare for the eventuality.

--
Regards

Steven Burn
Ur I.T. Mate Group
www.it-mate.co.uk

Keeping it FREE!

Disclaimer:
I know I'm probably wrong, I just like taking part ;o)
 
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