Bad Sectors on Hard Drive

[lycia69]

ok, so I didn't know this. Ive been all over the topics but apparently not good enough because I found referrences to it in a topic today about Throwing Hard Drive out a window.

Recently my computer was experiencing lockups. I thought it might be hard drive problems so I used NDD, or Norton Disk Damager. Well, suddenly I have several bad sectors!! OK, so I am going to open my case when I notice that after moving my computer forward across the desk, the cable from my monitor was off!!! I had forgot to tighten the cable to the video card after my recent installation of my new Motherboard!! ARGGHHH!! I had been getting lockups because when I played Rogue Spear my hand/mouse would make the desk, which is actually a drafting table, move back and forth which slowly worked the vga connector loose!! I fix that, but still have bad sectors. I remember reading something about a low level format would help me out there, but on further reading was warned against it that I should be "writing zeros to the disk". I have a Western Digital hard drive and after using E-Z drive I remember seeing that option somewhere. So I break out WDdiag prog run it and presto!!! No bad Sectors!!! Hard Drive like new!! To think in the past I supplied several computer stores with fixable hard drives!!

http://forums.windrivers.com/cgi-bin/forum/smilies/cwm45.gif

Oh well, live and lern. http://forums.windrivers.com/cgi-bin/forum/smilies/cwm35.gif

[This message has been edited by lycia69 (edited March 03, 2001).]

[Oski]

If it's any consolation, I was having problems recently with my Western Digital HD and it did actually fail.

In fact it stopped working right after I ran the DataLifeguard Diagnostics. It said there was an error that couldn't be fixed and that I should contact Western Digital Tech Support.

Well, the next time I tried to start up the computer the HD just made a few "clunk-clunk" sounds and it wouldn't start anymore.

WD did replace the drive under warrantee though.

[lycia69]

I've had the same drive for over 3 years and never had a problem. Even now I don't think it was a problem with thr drive itself...

Every one always tells me WD drives go bad, not to buy them, but I always defend them. No problems...
http://forums.windrivers.com/cgi-bin/forum/smilies/cwm35.gif


Knock on wood.

[Sowulo]

Every manufacturer, from time to time has had some manufacturing problems. If you see/hear of a bad drive check the manufacturing date on the label and don't buy any more that have that same date +/- a month or two. If you stay in this business long enough you will find this to be true. WD had a bad run about Aug to Oct 2000--since then, their drives have been their usually solid self.

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Ya never know, ya know?

[Schui]

I've got a quantum fireball 4.3, which is 3 years old or more... It runs a dream, no bad sectors, no probs... (touch wood)

My other drive was a samsung 12gb, 1 year old. no probs. just swapped it for a 20gb fujitsu, which should hopefully last a few more years! lol

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A General Protection Error has occured - Time to go home...

[3D Prophet II]

I've got an old 1.6GB WD HD in my wifes computer as a slave. It served me well for over 7 years. It was the first hard drive I bought to build my first gaming computer, it cost me $289 plus tax. Wow, I didn't even pay that for the 20.4GB WD HD I got in my system now.

But to get to the subject, yeah, anytime I've found bad sectors on a customers computer, I'd image their data on a known good HD, run a low level format on their hard drive, stream it back and get paid $60 for something they could of done themselves if they only had the knowledge. Norton Disk Doctor looks for errors alright, sometimes it marks sectors bad because it being a diagnostic program, found it hard to read/write info from potential bad sectors. Doing it's job, making it so your computers hard drive will run at it utmost speed, it moves data out of the potentially known bad sector and marks it bad, that way your system will just breeze by the hard to read sector marked bad, and seek data as usual. Scandisk will do the same, no biggie.