Reallocating bad sectors skipped - quantum fireball drive

Louis · Mar 9, 2008

Hello,

A PC has an IDE Quantum Fireball Plus AS 30 Gb drive which has
developed 2 bad sectors.

I used the Seagate's Seatools (DOS version) to diagnose and repair the
drive.

After the "Full Scan" finished, I have the following log :

Full Diagnostic Scan Result: Failed

The Following Sectors MAY be damaged
------------------------------------
LBA: 6316960
STATUS: Write-reallocation SKIPPED
USAGE: Not Resolved

LBA: 16875715
STATUS: Write-reallocation SKIPPED
USAGE: Not Resolved

My question : why is the reallocation skipped ? I didn't found any
option settings in the program..

What can I do to have these bad sectors reallocation successful ?

Thanks.

Rod Speed · Mar 10, 2008

Louis said:
Hello,

A PC has an IDE Quantum Fireball Plus AS 30 Gb drive which has
developed 2 bad sectors.

I used the Seagate's Seatools (DOS version) to diagnose and repair the
drive.

After the "Full Scan" finished, I have the following log :

Full Diagnostic Scan Result: Failed

The Following Sectors MAY be damaged
------------------------------------
LBA: 6316960
STATUS: Write-reallocation SKIPPED
USAGE: Not Resolved

LBA: 16875715
STATUS: Write-reallocation SKIPPED
USAGE: Not Resolved

My question : why is the reallocation skipped ?

That program is a steaming turd.

I didn't found any option settings in the program..

What can I do to have these bad sectors reallocation successful ?

The drive itself will do that if that is appropriate. You can force
it to do what is appropriate be rewriting to those two areas.

Louis · Mar 10, 2008

Rod Speed a utilisé son clavier pour écrire :

That program is a steaming turd.

The drive itself will do that if that is appropriate. You can force
it to do what is appropriate be rewriting to those two areas.

Thanks for your reply,

Can you be more specific on how to perform this ?

I guess I need a disk editor tool ? Any recommendation ?

Will this tool be able to "understand" LBA: 6316960 or will I need to
indicate the corresponding C H S ?

If the disk is "forced" this way, will I be able to perform a disk
image without my imaging software failing because of bad sectors ?

Thanks again.

Rod Speed · Mar 10, 2008

Louis said:
Rod Speed a utilisé son clavier pour écrire :

Thanks for your reply,

Can you be more specific on how to perform this ?

Depends on whether care about any of the data on the drive.

If you dont, just write zeros thru the entire drive.

Hitachi's DFT can do that and plenty of others can too.

I guess I need a disk editor tool ?

Nope, not if you dont care about the data on the drive.

Any recommendation ?

Not for that particular approach.

Will this tool be able to "understand" LBA: 6316960 or will I need to indicate the corresponding C H S ?

Not if you just want to write zeros thru the entire drive.

If the disk is "forced" this way, will I be able to perform a disk image without my imaging software failing because
of bad sectors ?

Yep, if you can get those two sectors reallocated, that will fix that problem.

Louis · Mar 10, 2008

Rod Speed vient de nous annoncer :

Depends on whether care about any of the data on the drive.

If you dont, just write zeros thru the entire drive.

Hitachi's DFT can do that and plenty of others can too.

Nope, not if you dont care about the data on the drive.

Not for that particular approach.

Not if you just want to write zeros thru the entire drive.

Yep, if you can get those two sectors reallocated, that will fix that
problem.

Is there a way to do the reallocation of the bad sectors without
zeroing the whole disk first ?

Thanks.

Rod Speed · Mar 10, 2008

Louis said:
Rod Speed vient de nous annoncer :

Is there a way to do the reallocation of the bad sectors without zeroing the whole disk first ?

Yes, you can just write to those sectors.

Its non trivial to work out which files those sectors are in,
but if you can work that out, you can just rewrite those files.

If those sectors are in free space, you can just fill the drive with crap and then delete the crap.

Franc Zabkar · Mar 10, 2008

Hello,

A PC has an IDE Quantum Fireball Plus AS 30 Gb drive which has
developed 2 bad sectors.

I used the Seagate's Seatools (DOS version) to diagnose and repair the
drive.

After the "Full Scan" finished, I have the following log :

Full Diagnostic Scan Result: Failed

The Following Sectors MAY be damaged
------------------------------------
LBA: 6316960
STATUS: Write-reallocation SKIPPED
USAGE: Not Resolved

LBA: 16875715
STATUS: Write-reallocation SKIPPED
USAGE: Not Resolved

My question : why is the reallocation skipped ? I didn't found any
option settings in the program..

What can I do to have these bad sectors reallocation successful ?

Thanks.

Run a file system repair tool such as Scandisk or Chkdsk with a full
surface scan. Any file that contains an unreadable sector should be
identified during a read test, and any bad sector in free space should
automatically be corrected by the drive during a write test. If you
delete the damaged files and replace them with good copies, then any
bad sectors in the space that is vacated will be reallocated (or
retested and recovered) next time they are written to by the OS. A
defrag will probably result in your bad sectors being identified
and/or reallocated, if they are within your file area rather than at
the tail end of your drive.

- Franc Zabkar

Louis · Mar 10, 2008

Franc Zabkar avait prétendu :

Run a file system repair tool such as Scandisk or Chkdsk with a full
surface scan. Any file that contains an unreadable sector should be
identified during a read test, and any bad sector in free space should
automatically be corrected by the drive during a write test. If you
delete the damaged files and replace them with good copies, then any
bad sectors in the space that is vacated will be reallocated (or
retested and recovered) next time they are written to by the OS. A
defrag will probably result in your bad sectors being identified
and/or reallocated, if they are within your file area rather than at
the tail end of your drive.

- Franc Zabkar

Thanks for your reply..

Won't this operation reallocate at the MFT level instead of the hard
disk level ?

Because I already performed a chkdsk /F /R of all the hard disk's
partitions and while it no longer find/fixes errors, my imaging
software still report it can't complete because it found bad sectors.

Louis.

Louis · Mar 10, 2008

Louis a écrit :

Franc Zabkar avait prétendu :

Thanks for your reply..

Won't this operation reallocate at the MFT level instead of the hard disk
level ?

Because I already performed a chkdsk /F /R of all the hard disk's partitions
and while it no longer find/fixes errors, my imaging software still report it
can't complete because it found bad sectors.

Louis.

Solved !

Instead of using a chkdsk /F /R in a command prompt to perform a chkdsk
at boot time, I performed the chkdsk from a Bart PE bootable CD, and
now I'm able to image the drive without getting bad sectors messages.

Don't know exactly what the difference is between these two methods,
but it looks like there's a difference in the results.

Thanks.

Franc Zabkar · Mar 13, 2008

Instead of using a chkdsk /F /R in a command prompt to perform a chkdsk
at boot time, I performed the chkdsk from a Bart PE bootable CD, and
now I'm able to image the drive without getting bad sectors messages.

Don't know exactly what the difference is between these two methods,
but it looks like there's a difference in the results.

I recently had a case of NTFS file system corruption on an XP hard
drive. I attempted to run CHKDSK from the repair console of a bootable
XP CD, but the file system was deemed to have unrecoverable errors. In
fact the principle problem was an inaccessible registry file (it
couldn't be deleted, copied, or renamed). I then installed the drive
into an external USB enclosure, attached it to a working XP system,
and ran CHKDSK from within a CMD window. CHKDSK found many problems,
including an MFT issue, all of which were fixed. Prior to running
CHKDSK, I tried to repair the drive from within the GUI via Tools >
Properties, but this also produced an "unrecoverable" message.

- Franc Zabkar