HD has a bad block ?

[StoneColdWhat]

My net got disconnected so I checked event viewer to see if it was the tcpip problem in XP sp2 and I got this error

DISK: The device, \Device\Harddisk0\D, has a bad block.

umm yeah what can I do anyway to fix it ?

[dcsos]

Probably beginning of the end of your harrd drive
Back it up and replace it.

[StoneColdWhat]

hmmm... maybe a spider got stuck in it.. I dont even know which drive it is.

[LOWTECH]

Maybe if ...Disconnect other drives but main drive and recheck event viewer, see if same message is there, if not reconnect other drives untill message appears to local problem drive

[jagabo]

Run XP's Error Checking utility for each drive. Enable the "Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors" option.

[handyguy]

There are plenty of HD utils on download.com

Hds come with extra sectors that they can use in this sort of situation.

[dcsos]

A Spider Eh?, to bad he wasn't radioactive.

What they are referring to is the possibility that :
AFTER YOU BAC UP THE DRIVE
you can try
RECOVERY of BAD sectors with hard drive utility.
Do not attempt this with data still on the drive!

[Wile_E]

Personally I wouldn't recover the bad sectors. If the O/S marked the sector as bad, it did it for a reason. It won't use that sector to store data, if it's marked as bad. If it keeps marking more sectors as bad, I would replace the drive. If your motherboard BIOS supports SMART, turn it on and get a windows utility to monitor your drives. Better yet, go RAID and if one drive fails, you won't lose your data.

[JerryB]

My net got disconnected so I checked event viewer to see if it was the tcpip problem in XP sp2 and I got this error

DISK: The device, \Device\Harddisk0\D, has a bad block.

umm yeah what can I do anyway to fix it ?

hi,
first it's not unusal for a hard drive to have a "bad block" however if you start getting many of them, in a short period of time,, then it definitely time to backup and get a new hard drive....
note: scan disk when it see a bad block, will mark it bad and transfer what ever data , that it can, to a different location.... marking the block bad will prevent that block from future use..

Bad blocks are a result of
1. a physical damage to the plate, possbily moving the pc when it still running.. read/write head hits the plate...
2. situation where a progressively increase in the number of black blocks indicate either the plates or deterioating or the read/write heads not tracking correctly...
3. the elctromagnetic properties of a block is getting too weak to hold data.

the very least monitor and do scan disk to insure the issue is a isolated one and not a indication the hard drive going bad!

[Poppa_Meth]

Anyone have any experience with Spinrite on this sort of situation? I've heard it's a good utility from some and clunky and outdated from others.

[Pixel Land]

Spinrite 6 has been a god send at work more than once. Though once a drive is "done for" there is no way it will ever be able to be used on a daily basis again, but Spinrite will bring a drive that won't even boot, back up to a level where it can atleast have files copied from it, and also be cloned to a new drive. I give it 10 out of 10 from very positive personal experience.

[Poppa_Meth]

Good to know. I was thinking of investing in it myself for work purposes. I have a color PC at the paint store that has had a lot of HDD issues and just in case it ever goes....well hell I'm using acronis on it anyway, but still, it's not my money I'm playing around with!!

[StoneColdWhat]

Ok guys so heres what happened, after getting the msgs last night I decided to shut down and give it a rest. The next day the thing wouldn't even boot up, it would make it pass bios barely and it would start making the HD on and off noise and it wouldn't stop unless I turn the comp off, so I figured it was pretty much done so I get a new HD, put it in, install os on it and way I go trying to recover the stuff on the bad drive. I decided to check under disk management to see what condition it was in, and to my surprise it said healthy! Hmm soo tomorrow I'm going to run some diag. programs on it to see how its really doing, probably going to throw it in an other comp as slave.

[Bjs]

Xp is pretty lame when it come's to these problem's ... it may "assume" bad block identified , when in fact it screwed up during the read / write cycle to the area and was unable to complete the task , and unable to recover .

You should try and download insert ... it's a linux rescue security tool for the pc , and come's packed with many of the tool's from hard drive manufacture's , ready to go from a simple menu ... run the tool's specified for the unit by manufacturer id .

The tool should popup with a warning saying an os or other tool such as a bios overlay product has marked this area as "bad" ... but if the tool is allowed to scan this area , and report's nothing wrong ... then it is correct .

Recovery of these problem's under xp os is not so easy , and the simplest is to have a second hard drive of equal or larger capacity .

Let's say in this case , you have a good condition maxtor suitable for the task ... already partitioned and fomated (same as other drive) and the drive with issue is a seagate .

Run the maxtor drive copy utility ... ignore it's complaint about the other drive being a seagate , and let it copy the content's from one drive to the other .

When done , run the tool's for the seagate unit ...

If drive was a single partition , then remove old partition , and repartition and format the unit .

Then run the seagate drive copy utility to copy all back from the maxtor .

Problem resolved ... and incase of major trojan , virus attack or screwy software stuffup's ... other drive become's master "clean" backup ...

You now can save your bacon in less than 15 minute's ... and keep your money in your pocket ... no tech's needed .

----------------

This work's even when professional tool's hit the brick wall and fail to copy the drive's .

Work's for " your drive is about to chuck up ... replace it asap or else" situation .

Dose not work for quicken related product's if new drive dose not match that of unit replaced ... product wil assume it is unregistered , and your key's will not work .

So for store owner's , this is a problem ... quicken only has support during the hour's of 9.00am to 5.00pm , monday to friday ... fix pc sunday after close ... and you might as well close the shop for the following day untill quicken is able to resolve the issue .

Real handy dimwitt's ...