Software that speeds up formatting a HDD with bad sectors?

[infernojericho]

I have a very old HDD that has many bad sectors. I just want to install some very old and classic programs so I don't mind if the HDD have bad sectors. The data is not important to me.

When I use the MS-DOS format to format the HDD, because there are bad sectors, it will always show "Trying to recover allocation unit: xxxxx" And the format is very, very, very slow.

Last time I formatted a 500MB partition, it took 1 week to finish formatting!

My question: Is there any other formatting programs with can mark bad sectors but at a much faster speed?

Thanks!!!

 

[slicessoul]

Have you tried Partition Magic ?

 

[CompuTronix]

Have you tried SpinRite 6.0?

 

[Codesmith]

Compare the cost of a new drive with the value you place on your time.

 

[CompuTronix]

Codesmith, thanks for mentioning the other school of thought, which is, when hard drives begin to exhibit bad clusters, platter surface failures typically continue to accumulate. Writing data to a failing drive, is basically binary Russian Roulette.

 

[infernojericho]

Thanks for the reply. I did try Spinrite 6.0. But the thing is everything I load up Spinrite, it seems to freeze at the screen "discovering System's Mass Storage Devices." The hard drive LED on my notebook is on though.

Any idea what's going on? Or any other recommendations?

Thanks

 

[CompuTronix]

Personally, I don't screw with flakey hard drives. At the first sign of unreliability, if the drive is still under manufacturers warranty, it's RMA'd. If it's not in warranty, then it's slam-dumpstered. My data and my time are too precious to play binary Russian Roulette. There is no middle ground. It's either good, or it's outa here.