Disk Tool??

[Ripper2860]

Can anybody recommend a good hard disk tool that is better than "CHKDSK" for scanning, re-locating files and marking off bad sectors? Freeware would be ideal ,but open.

I'm using WinXP and NTFS and it seems Norton Disk Doctor just sets a CHKDSK scan on next boot. Ontrack Easy Recovery only tells me I have a bad sector, but does not seem to provide a facility for scanning and re-allocating to the same disk -- only recovery to a new HDD.. I may be wrong, though.

Thanks !!

[Capmaster]

I'm not sure how many actually have direct access of hardware because of NT HAL. I've always used Disk Doctor or CHKDSK.

[Ripper2860]

Yeah, NT has the disk locked which I understand, but I was hoping there was a DOS-based or bootable utility that was more comprehensive.

[Capmaster]

Yeah, NT has the disk locked which I understand, but I was hoping there was a DOS-based or bootable utility that was more comprehensive.

You may have trouble with one of those if your HD is NTFS. If it isn't NTFS, WHY NOT???

[bazooka]

Are you just running chkdsk or are you running chkdsk /f?

chkdsk /f is wht you need to run.

[Ripper2860]

Yeah, I'm running NTFS. Ran a "CHKDSK /f /r", but 3rd party disk diagnostics still states a bad block. I was hoping there was some util that would mark-off the bad block at the drive level -- something equivalent of adding the block to the bad block list in the old low-level format days of MFM and RLL drives. I don't even know if it can be done with IDE.

[sterno]

In theory modern IDE drives remap bad blocks automatically, up until they hit some limit on how many they can mask.

[offline]

Should be a free tool from your HDD manufacturer
to do this. If not try www.grc.com has a tool (expensive)