Good Format Program for Hard Disk with Some Bad Clusters

  • Thread starter Thread starter jaugustine
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J

jaugustine

Hi,

I have a spare 20G HDD I want to use for non-important "stuff".

When I formatted it using a Windows 98se floppy boot disk, the format
program encountered some bad clusters. Unfortunately, it attempts to
"recover" the bad cluster(s) which takes a long time. I prefer the format
program to "mark" the problem cluster(s) as "Bad", and proceed. I aborted
the format process because it was taking too long.

Note: There are no "switches" (/) in the format command that modify the
"recover" action.

Do you know of a good format program I can download that allows me
to format this hard disk without trying to "recover" problem clusters?

Thank You in Advance, John

PS, Remove "ine" from my email address
 
Hi,

I have a spare 20G HDD I want to use for non-important "stuff".
Click to expand...

Toss it to a dumpter see if it will work <bg>. Since you should be able
to get a 1TB for around $60-70 (when onsale), and cheaper on smaller HD. I
would suggest not to bother with that 20G
When I formatted it using a Windows 98se floppy boot disk, the format
program encountered some bad clusters. Unfortunately, it attempts to
"recover" the bad cluster(s) which takes a long time. I prefer the format
program to "mark" the problem cluster(s) as "Bad", and proceed. I aborted
the format process because it was taking too long.

Note: There are no "switches" (/) in the format command that modify the
"recover" action.

Do you know of a good format program I can download that allows me
to format this hard disk without trying to "recover" problem clusters?

Thank You in Advance, John

PS, Remove "ine" from my email address
Click to expand...

I haven't used the util for ages to know if there is any available at the
moment, but decades ago, I do remember there were programs to MARK the bad
sector(s) prevending writing to it.

And I guess after marking all bad sectors your 20GB will turn into 10GB
which is safe to store the important stuff. And here I just tossed away
several 100-250GB after sitting in the corner taking room and collecting
dirt for ages.
 
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