2006-09-24 22:55:01 · 7 answers · asked by Anonymous in Computers & Internet ➔ Hardware ➔ Add-ons
Once a sector has been marked as bad it can no longer be used unless you perform a low level format of the drive.
However, it has probably been marked as bad for a good reason. Once you start to get bad sectors it is definitely worth looking at replacing the hard drive as more are bound to follow.
2006-09-25 00:10:24 · answer #1 · answered by barrytabrah 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
I've only just had my *funky* hard drive crash after 7 years. When I got it it had bad sectors, and I've struggled with system freezes and the loud scratchy noises for that long. Most of the time it'll be fine.
So despite what others say about it being useless... 7 years, dude.
Normally you can remove bad sectors with a reformat. What sectors cannot be repaired will get marked as 'bad' and your OS will not attempt to use them. Another way is to run a disc scan or checking utility, which will attempt to recover the data on the affected sector (though not always effectively). Whereas these programs can often crash while attempting this, reformatting will not... just sometimes take a while to get its head around the problem.
Problem is that these things can spread, although over a long enough time you get to know where on your hard drive you're going to experience problems next.
I recommend having a secondary hard drive to use to store all your important stuff on, and using the bad hard drive to store the OS on. This way when you reformat you're only going to lose the actual OS and whatever you've installed, reinstalling windows is a lot easier than trying to travel back in time 4 years to take more photos.
In this way, most of the problems you'll experience will be with page files/swap space used by your OS on that drive. You can, however, allocate room on your secondary hard disk for this purpose, reducing your risk of system crash.
Generally I found that the system would kinda 'warn' you with some scratching or temporary freezing. That'll be your cue to reboot the computer, preferably via the correct restart process. If you can run your disk scan or checking utility from command line before windows boots, then that is the preferable way to do it.
However, assuming whatever data you wrote to the bad sector, that caused the noise/freeze, is not actively used in a normal bootup, you can check the disk for errors within windows.
At present my bad drive is not being detected by the bios. While I could have sworn this happened several years ago, I can't remember how I got around it. So I plan to send the disk to a friend who works in data forensics to recover what I had on that disk and put it on to another hard drive or series of dvds.
No biggy.
7 years!!
2006-09-27 11:15:47 · answer #2 · answered by Sierra 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Some sectors of a hard drive are shown as bad for a couple of reasons, damaged information or damaged disk are a couple.
Try defraging the disk.
Start - Accessories - System Tools - Disc defrag.
This will check the whole disc and mark any bad sectors so that they can not be used in the future.
If the bad sectors continue to mount up then consider backing up all your data (not a bad idea anyway) and buying a new disc as it is more than likely on its way out.
Good luck.
2006-09-25 06:06:06 · answer #3 · answered by Bladerunner (Dave) 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
go to start>my computer>Right click local disk C>Properties>Tools
>error checking>check now>Click both boxes.
You will get a message telling you that you can't do it now, you have to restart your computer. click ok and restart your computer.
It will take about 30 to 45 mins to complete the tests.
If you only have a few bad sectors then fixing will be fine. However as mentioned above, if you have major errors then your drive is on its way out probably.This will still fix it but your future is short on this drive!
2006-09-25 06:03:03 · answer #4 · answered by Mordak 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
There are 101 ways to remove. The best is to back up your data immediately and through your hard disk to dust bin..You will feel much more inconvenient when you will lose your data after one or two month...your hard disk is going to be expired very soon if it has bad section
2006-09-25 06:01:49 · answer #5 · answered by Farhana Noreen 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
There are two types of bedsector.
if it's logical, you should format it with low-level formatter.
or if it's physical, you should throw away it.
bedsector is almost physical...
2006-09-25 06:01:34 · answer #6 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
buy a new hard
2006-09-25 06:07:32 · answer #7 · answered by mr. k 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋