Is there any utility/tool to overwrite bad sectors on HDD

[blinky88]

I have an 80 gig HDD with a couple of bad sectors. I have used the option in scan disk to no avail, however I think it can be done.

Thanks to those members who respond.

[VenGeanCe]

well i think gor logical bad sectors norton has a utility.btw other tech experts could ya plz explain what r logical badsectors and how r they caused

[d_unbeliever]

try to google zero fill or "low level formatting". it MIGHT work on you

[Poppa_Meth]

What brand is your HDD. Most manufacturers have a tool for download on their site that will allow you do to a zero fill or low level format.

[Soopafresh]

http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

You might find something to help you.

[monzie]

If XP (or w2k) type CMD into the run box, then type into the command prompt <chkdsk /f> (without the <> and note the space after the k).

[bazooka]

You could try driveregenerator.

It is skeptical though.

You have a damaged hard drive, and the only thing way around it would be to get another hard drive.

[bazooka]

What brand is your HDD. Most manufacturers have a tool for download on their site that will allow you do to a zero fill or low level format.

All a low level format would do would mark the sectors as bad and will keep those sectors from being used.

[monzie]

Low Level is a good idea but it will wipe the HDD 100% clean.

[Garibaldi]

bazooka suggested this tool to me... but I never had to use it after I reinstalled windows, but you could give it a try:
http://www.pcnet-online.com/downloads/hddregerator.htm

[Soopafresh]

I've used that tool before. Prepare to let it run for a week or more on a 40GB Drive. It's good, but S-L-O-W.

[gmatov]

No!

If you have a bad sector, it is a damaged, magnetically, spot in the platters. Irreparable.

BUT, if you run scandisk from DOS, it will run for hours and stop, do not assume it is stalled, and "Attempting to recover bad sectors" will show. It will eventually decide it cannot recover the bad sectors and "mark" them as bad, thereby reducing the capacity of your drive by that many bytes, 4K to 32K, no biggie.

ALL HDDs are run before they are shipped, I do believe, and formatted then, which is why no 2 drives by the same maker, of the same nominal size have exactly the same formatted capacity. Not formatted as to FAT 32, nor NTFS.

The media does flake off, not nearly as badly as in the old days, but with today's density, a square millimeter might be a couple megabytes, and all it takes is a few bytes to make a file unreadable, so a sector or more might be marked bad when it is just bytes.

That is a result of formatting, in the first place. If 10 bytes in a 32 KB sector are unreadable, the entire sector is marked as bad in the EIDE, the electronics on the drive, NOT in Windows.

So, run Scandisk, in DOS, and live with the results, or send it back if still under warranty.

Cheers,

George

[bazooka]

No!

If you have a bad sector, it is a damaged, magnetically, spot in the platters. Irreparable.

BUT, if you run scandisk from DOS, it will run for hours and stop, do not assume it is stalled, and "Attempting to recover bad sectors" will show. It will eventually decide it cannot recover the bad sectors and "mark" them as bad, thereby reducing the capacity of your drive by that many bytes, 4K to 32K, no biggie.

ALL HDDs are run before they are shipped, I do believe, and formatted then, which is why no 2 drives by the same maker, of the same nominal size have exactly the same formatted capacity. Not formatted as to FAT 32, nor NTFS.

The media does flake off, not nearly as badly as in the old days, but with today's density, a square millimeter might be a couple megabytes, and all it takes is a few bytes to make a file unreadable, so a sector or more might be marked bad when it is just bytes.

That is a result of formatting, in the first place. If 10 bytes in a 32 KB sector are unreadable, the entire sector is marked as bad in the EIDE, the electronics on the drive, NOT in Windows.

So, run Scandisk, in DOS, and live with the results, or send it back if still under warranty.

Cheers,

George

My sentiments exactly. You are dealing with a damaged hard drive. All that will happen is the data will be moved to another area of the drive.