Hard drive sector failing - what files affected?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Putty
  • Start date Start date
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Putty

Hi,

I've got a hard drive that has some sectors that are starting to go
bad.

What is the easiest way to figure out what data, and especially which
files are being affected?

Thanks
 
Your first stage should be to backup as much data as possible, while
the drive still works.

You can use my software to determine where errors may be www.cnwrecovery.com

The wizard will scan the disk for files, and if you then look at the
Log, the start sector of each file can be seen. The start sector list
column can be sorted. If you then know where the sectors are failing,
you can determine which files may be suspect.

NB, the drive must not be the system drive, recovery software should
never be loaded onto a suspect drive.

Michael Cotgrove
CnW Recovery
 
Putty said:
Hi,

I've got a hard drive that has some sectors that are starting to go
bad.

What is the easiest way to figure out what data, and especially which
files are being affected?
Click to expand...

Here's a wild guess: the filesystem checking utilities?
Scandisk, chkdsk or whatever the other flavors are for Mac or linux,
whatever OS it is, that you are using.
 
If you have the sector number and the file system is NTFS you can use
NFI.exe. See: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/253066/en-us

Alternatively you can do a read/write surface scan using DiskPatch. Sectors
that were reallocated will contain the string "DPBADSECTOR". Seach the
volume for files containing "DPBADSECTOR" and you know these are the files
affected.

If spares are not available then sectors can not be reallocated. In that
case you can clone the disk. Sectors that could not be copied (because
they're bad) will contain the string "DPBADSECTOR" on the destination disk.
 
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