corrupted pagingfile leaves 16Kb bad sector

[janshim]

Hello.

I run XP Pro on my Acer TM529 P-III 850MHz notebook with 256Mb RAM and a fixed 3Gb (Min and Max value) Paging File. I have always used Hibernation with no problems until yesterday when powering on from a previous Hibernate event, led to a corrupted file which WinXP identified with no valid filename. On reboot, scandisk found, corrected and reported 16Kb found in bad sector.

Can somebody tell me if this is a physical damage? I have Diskeeper Pro that does Boot defrag but it uses WinXP's own scandisk that repeatedly reports the same thing. The harddisk is an IBM DJSA-220 20GB and only four months old. All i am after is whether the "Bad Sector" reported by Scandisk is permanent or something that I can get rid.
Private email if necessary (janshim@brunet.bn)


Jan

 

[Zoron]

There's really no repairing a bad sector. About the only thing you can do is lock the sector out so that info won't be read from / written to the bad sector. (Scandisk usually does this automatically). I am curious about one thing... a 3GB PAGEFILE?!? I thought anything more that 1.5 - 2 times your physical RAM size was a waste...

<font color=red> If you design software that is fool-proof, only a fool will want to use it. </font color=red>

 

[Toejam31]

I agree with Zoron ... that's a pretty hefty paging file! What could you possibly be doing with a laptop that requires that much virtual memory? I'd recommend 384MB (256 x 1.5). That should be the default minimum for your system in WinXP, and more than sufficient for nearly any kind of normal use.

A bad sector can be either from corruption in the file system, a messed up file allocation in a program, or because of a physically damaged area on a hard drive platter.

<A HREF="http://www.pcguide.com/ts/x/comp/hdd/errors_BadSectors.htm" target="_new">My hard disk has bad sectors or is developing bad sectors over time</A>

Download the <A HREF="http://www.storage.ibm.com/hdd/support/download.htm" target="_new">IBM drive fitness tools</A> and check out your disk. If the bad sector is permanent, considering the age of the drive ... I'd send it back and get a new one.

Be sure and back up your files before testing the disk ... the utilities package may recommend a low-level format, which is basically just writing 0's & 1's on the hard drive, in this case. But it will wipe out your data, including the partition information.

Toejam31

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