Question about bad sectors

[dsj2086]

If I have a hard drive with some bad sectors that have been marked by chkdsk, and am going to format and reinstall Windows 7, will I need to run chkdsk again after the fact to mark those bad sectors? If that is the case, don't I run the risk of the installation writing files to those bad sectors?

 

[RealBeast]

While you can use that drive, if it already has a significant number of bad sectors I would use a different drive for the OS and just use that one for storage -- and always use good backup habits.

The install won't write to those sectors as once they are marked bad they will never be written to again.

 

[_zxzxzx_]

^+1. It's fine if it's a small number but if there's too many I wouldn't be trusting the drive, especially for the OS.

 

[dsj2086]

Ok thank you. It is on a netbook that doesn't get used much and doesn't have anything important stored on it. It's something that I don't really want to put any money into (replacing the drive). How then is a sector that has been marked stored or remembered? I figured it was some sort of file or registry entry that simply told Windows not to write to that part of the hard drive.

 

[RealBeast]

Ok thank you. It is on a netbook that doesn't get used much and doesn't have anything important stored on it. It's something that I don't really want to put any money into (replacing the drive). How then is a sector that has been marked stored or remembered? I figured it was some sort of file or registry entry that simply told Windows not to write to that part of the hard drive.

The physical drive has a dedicated sector to record bad sectors so it will not be an issue once marked.

 

[dsj2086]

Best answer selected by dsj2086.

 

[dsj2086]

Ah ok. That makes more sense then. Thank you for your help and quick responses.