format a harddisk with a bad sector

  • Thread starter Thread starter Dirkie
  • Start date Start date
D

Dirkie

Hi ,

Perhaps someone can help me?
Starting up my laptop is a long way to go! It takes half an hour to
start up.
I want to format my harddisk but it doesn't work! When analysing the
disk, I get always a error! There is no space enough. There is a bad
sector on that disk. What can I do?
Is there a program, so I can format the disk and the bad sector will
be ignored? Thanks a lot!

Dirk
 
Dirkie said:
Hi ,

Perhaps someone can help me?
Starting up my laptop is a long way to go! It takes half an hour to
start up.
I want to format my harddisk but it doesn't work! When analysing the
disk, I get always a error! There is no space enough. There is a bad
sector on that disk. What can I do?
Is there a program, so I can format the disk and the bad sector will
be ignored? Thanks a lot!
Click to expand...

The hard drive manufacturer's diagnostic should be able to do that.

You can work out the hard drive manufacturer using Everest.
http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=4181
 
Hi ,

Perhaps someone can help me?
Starting up my laptop is a long way to go! It takes half an hour to
start up.
I want to format my harddisk but it doesn't work! When analysing the
disk, I get always a error! There is no space enough. There is a bad
sector on that disk. What can I do?
Is there a program, so I can format the disk and the bad sector will
be ignored? Thanks a lot!

Dirk
Click to expand...


It's time to buy a new drive. Drives have spare sectors
such that once you start seeing any, there were already
quite a few and likely more to come. It's not worth the
hassle, just stop using the drive NOW, so you won't put any
more wear on it till you get a chance to copy off anything
salvagable onto a new drive.
 
It's time to buy a new drive. Drives have spare sectors
such that once you start seeing any, there were already
quite a few and likely more to come. It's not worth the
hassle, just stop using the drive NOW, so you won't put any
more wear on it till you get a chance to copy off anything
salvagable onto a new drive.
Click to expand...


That's exactly right!

A drive with a few bad sectors, though not good...is usually formatable...
if the drive is so bad that it cannot be formatted...it's a *sure* sign that
it needs to be replaced
 
Hi ,

Perhaps someone can help me?
Starting up my laptop is a long way to go! It takes half an hour to start
up.
I want to format my harddisk but it doesn't work! When analysing the disk,
I get always a error! There is no space enough. There is a bad sector on
that disk. What can I do?
Is there a program, so I can format the disk and the bad sector will be
ignored? Thanks a lot!

Dirk
Click to expand...

Wow, off-hand I'd say if the disk is full or nearly full that's why it
takes 30min to boot. Some free space is needed by most OS.

Google for "Ultimate Boot CD" which has a number of utilities for viewing
and fixing files, hard disks, etc. It has a couple of vendor HD
utilities, like DiscWizard from Seagate. Running the Vendor utility will
flag bad sectors on the HD. However if your HD has a large number of bad
sectors it's time to backup your data and buy a new HD.
 
It's time to buy a new drive. Drives have spare sectors
such that once you start seeing any, there were already
quite a few and likely more to come.
Click to expand...

Its more complicated than that. Hard drives dont automatically
reallocate all bad sectors, particularly ones where the contents
dont change. They only do that on writes, not reads, essentially
so you can attempt to recover the data from the bad sector.
 
jaster said:
Dirkie wrote
Click to expand...
Wow, off-hand I'd say if the disk is full or nearly full that's why it
takes 30min to boot. Some free space is needed by most OS.
Click to expand...

Mindlessly silly, any decent OS will just give
up if there isnt enough free space to boot.

Its almost certainly retrying on bads and eventually succeeds.
 
Mindlessly silly, any decent OS will just give
up if there isnt enough free space to boot.

Its almost certainly retrying on bads and eventually succeeds.
Click to expand...

for half an hour? HDDs usually give up within a minute, so it would
have to be retrying many times on different stuff. HDD sounds real
screwed.


NT
 
(e-mail address removed) wrote
Rod Speed wrote
Click to expand...
for half an hour?
Click to expand...

Yep, with more than one sector that needs to be retried.
HDDs usually give up within a minute, so it would
have to be retrying many times on different stuff.
Yep.

HDD sounds real screwed.
Click to expand...

Or something else is producing that result.

It certainly wont be due to the lack of free space.
 
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