Bad sectors(NEED HELP)

[mason4]

I have a 20.0 GB hard drive. I reformatted my computer after expirencing problems. In the process of reformatting the drive, it kept searching for bad clusters. Does this mean my hard drive is going bad? The computer does not run right. Thanks for your input. P.S. While reformatting the drive, during the percentage count-up, it's interrupted with this line, "Trying to recover allocation unit". What does this mean????
<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by mason4 on 08/09/01 09:37 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[NickM]

So far no bad sectors shown, your harddrive is probably OK.

Next time before formatting, run FDISK /MBR from command prompt.
This command cleans up Master Boot Record on a harddrive.
Then run FORMAT /U , that performs thorough check on a harddrive during unconditional format.

Make sure that the ribbon cable is good, matches the harddrive specification, and properly connected.

It's also good to provide enough space for airflow, or to install an auxiliary fan for proper cooling, especially for a modern harddrive, that running fast and hot .

Overheating, bad or too long ribbon cable, loose connections, other faulty IDE devices (i.e. CD-ROM), and also the beginning of developing bad sectors might cause some kind of harddrive erratic behavior.

 

[Lars_Coleman]

If it's a physical bad sector then your microprocessor on the drive will take care of it, but if it's data that's corrupt and making it show as a bad sector, doing a Format X:/u or a Low Level Format with the hard drive manufactures software will take care of the problem.

Check out this Document from Microsoft for further information about Fdisk/mbr ::: <A HREF="http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q69/0/13.ASP" target="_new"> Q69013 </A>

<font color=red>"Can you deal with that!"</font color=red>

 

[NickM]

In addition to MS’s info, the /MBR parameter is tailor-made for eliminating boot-sector virus programs that infect the Master Partition Boot Sector (Cylinder 0, Head 0, Sector 1) on a harddrive. This should not cause a problem on an empty or normally functioning harddrive.
The /MBR will overwrite the partition tables if the two signatures bites at the end of the sector (55AAh) are corrupted by virus or damaged. This situation is highly unlikely, but if these signature bites were damaged, you would know: the system wouldn’t boot and would act as though there were no partitions at all.
A backup (at least of partition table information) is recommended before implementing the FDISK /MBR on harddrives containing data.

 

[hypnotic_kumquat]

during the percentage count-up, it's interrupted with this line, "Trying to recover allocation unit". What does this mean????

This means there ARE bad areas (allocation units) on your drive. It's trying to repeatedly read the data in the cluster/sector it's having a problem with. If successful, it will mark the sector as bad and copy the data to another area of the disk.

I'd run a low-level scandisk or comparable utility every couple weeks and watch for bad sectors. If you're seeing a couple every time, make a backup and start looking for a new drive.

-hyp


"Let's take the warning labels off everything and let natural selection clean the gene pool!"

 

[psyclone]

In my profesional experience it can never be a good thing when your HDD shows up errors when formating, but like the other guy said do a format /mbr and see what it says.

<b>What was that!</b>