bad sector

[abudaood]

hi every body

this is the first topic to me

i want you to help me giving an artical about the bad sector or any information can help me to know about the bad sector and the couses of it as well as how to be safe from it

thanks, ... have awonderfull day ..

[Astalavista]

All the Information u need is here

[puntoMX]

Welcom abudaood,

Bad sectors are a part of a disk that cannot be used because it is damaged. When you format a disk, the operating system identifies any bad sectors on the disk and marks them so they will not be used. If a sector that already contains data becomes damaged, you will need special software to recover the data.

It’s not unusual for a hard disk to leave the manufacturing process with a damaged sector; however, this does not affect the overall performance of the disk as the damaged "fields" is considered unusable.

Also, if you have bad sectors and your drive has warranty, I would go for RAM (with other words returning the disk to the store you bought it. If it’s an old disk (witch I think is) I would start to replace it. Most of the time there will be damaged "fields" that grow a bit after more use. If you still want to use it then you could be sitting on a time bomb, with the risk of loosing data.

Any questions more? Ask .

@ Astalavista, I see how you make friends

[Drewdatrip]

Bad sectors are either sections of the hard Drive that have damaged or stacked up corrupted data.

Windows will automatically section off these sectors as to avoid any isses with writing data to these damaged regions of the Hard Drive.

Commenly a Low level format or Zero fill can fix many of these isses. Due to the fact that commenly the drive is not damaged...it just thinks it is...

Find out the maker of the drive and download their disk utilities...commenly they have a Low level formater and diagnosic boot disk that can fix or inform you about the drive.

|Drew|

[puntoMX]

Find out the maker of the drive and download their disk utilities...commenly they have a Low level formater and diagnosic boot disk that can fix or inform you about the drive.

I like to add:

BUT! Read carefully, before you do that, ALL info given by the manufacturer! You could damage your drive more. Also you will loose ALL data stored on that drive.

[abudaood]

thanks to all

ok, now i know the bad sector and i have red about it on some web page. they said that there are 2 types of the bad sector : logically and phsically.the first one we can fix it by using some program but the other is difficult.

my qutoin now:

1- what cause this problem and how can i save or protecte my disk from it?

2- can this probelm be found on the cd or flopy?

3- how can i know the my hard disk have abad sector?

4- can i get back the data from the bad sector eara?

[yusmol]

If u got bad sector on u'r harddisk, u could try HDD REGENERATOR.

Not so sure how it work, it help.

U can get it from *******

Edited January 31, 2005 by Drewdatrip

[jaclaz]

@yusmol

please READ THE RULES

http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=18408

1. This is not a warez site! Links/Requests to warez and/or illegal material (porn, cracks, serials, etc..) will not be tolerated. Discussion of circumventing activation/timebombs/keygens or any other illegal activity will also not be tolerated. If you ignore any of the aforementioned you will receive a final warning. If you choose to continue, you will be banned without notice.

and COMPLY TO THEM

@abudahood

have a look at this thread about how HD are arranged phisically and logically:

http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=34575&hl=

Sometimes a certain sector has a defective magnetic media, and thus CANNOT be read/written reliably, thus it is marked bad.

Sometimes by writing to it several times different values the media is somewhat "refreshed", and starts working again.(not unlike Ni-Cd batteries that, up to a certain extent can be rejuvenated by cycles of charging/discharging)

However a drive that starts developing bad sectors, even if they are "recovered" by the technique above described is to be considerd UNRELIABLE and should be either substituted as soon as possible or used in systems where NO important data is involved.

jaclaz

[syskplim]

thanks to all

ok, now i know the bad sector and i have red about it on some web page. they said that  there are 2 types of the bad sector : logically and phsically.the first one we can fix it by using some program but the other is difficult.

my qutoin now:

1- what cause this problem and how can i save or protecte my disk from it?

2- can this probelm be found on the cd or flopy?

3- how can i know the my hard disk have abad sector?

4- can i get back the data from the bad sector eara?

As i know, 'phsically' bad sector has no way to recover even we used some diagnostic tools given by the manufacturer. we can try to retrieve some data that dropped on phsical bad sector but not all the data we can trace them back. i used NDD and PCtools before and they worked fine. but there is no PCtools anymore in the market.

Some area that shown as bad sector may be not really bad but only go weak. we can call it 'weak sector'. Some of the protection diskette and keydisk use this method to avoid the floppy to be 'diskcopy'. When we want to diskcopy a keydisk, computer will copy those weak sector as bad sector and the copy process will ignore some data that saved in weak sector. This will make the duplicated copy won't function correctly. Some of the copy tools will transfer those data that dropped on weak sector to different area that is good, this also will cause that keydisk become malfunction.

'Logical' bad sector may cause by viruses or some software. This is not really bad sector. Those bad sector will become good sector if we format that media (HDD/FDD). Tools like NDD can recover Logical bad sector or even changes those good sector into bad.

SO 'BAD SECTOR' can be happened in HDD and FDD.

Also, if you have bad sectors and your drive has warranty, I would go for RAM (with other words returning the disk to the store you bought it. If it’s an old disk (witch I think is) I would start to replace it. Most of the time there will be damaged "fields" that grow a bit after more use. If you still want to use it then you could be sitting on a time bomb, with the risk of loosing data.

I agree what as MX said, it is good idea to send bad sector item for RAM or change that media with good one to avoid data lost.

[horsecharles]

I think that all hard drives come with bad sectors-- right straight from the manufacturing plant-- though small in number and marked off: there is no 100% perfection on this planet<g>.

We don't get cheated on capacity, btw, because to being with it's larger to compensate...

So i wouldn't be concerned with having a few, but if they seem to be increasing...

And i think that today's drives w/ S.M.A.R.T technology are a godsend(make sure it's enabled in Bios) compared to their predecessors:

http://www.storagereview.com/guide2000/ref...turesSMART.html

Some will say that this technology ain't much help-- heck, it can't hurt; and it's well appreciated from someone who once suffered unexpected disk failure(some circuit on the disk's board burned out).

That burned circuit years ago prodded opening the case and peering inside in spite of the usual admonishments & total lack of knowledge-- and what an eyeful:

we consumers treated computers so shoddily, and system configurators were so cavalier in their design and building-- it's a wonder computers even ran at all.

Inside the case-- one inch of crud on the bottom, dust covering everything, no extra fans anywhere-- & the ones for the psu & processor almost totally obliterated with gunk-- in almost air-tight cases. What's heinous is that most metal shells have designs/holes in place for plenty of fans and airflow-- then along comes the systems seller and covers everything up with a pretty exterior that usually blocks most holes/vents. Even nowdays with plenty of talk about case design & modding re proper airflow / lowering temps, using extra fans for the video card and elsewhere:

there's very little talk about front fans for the disk drives-- and though there are exteriors with plenty of vents around, they often don't include front vents to match the ones in the metal shell.

So I now take the following miminal steps to protect the hard drives(yes, plural-- eveyone should have 3 or more...more on this later), which i think are the most important component, maybe the only important one: i don't care if whatever else melts down, as long as all the data is safe(Even if i'm broke and have to prostitute/sharmuta myself to get a new one-- i'll do it with a smile-- knowing i didn't lose any data):

1. I drilled plenty holes in all the computers, and installed front fans in the slots already present for them in the inner shell, as well as other fans where necessary, including an extra exhaust fan in the back.

2. I planned ahead for failure already. I expect that one day one of the hard drives will fail suddenly-- either of its own fault, or from some power surge in spite of appropriate protection in place. So, I have at least two identical models of each hard drive-- something happens to one: the circuit board, etc. can always be swapped out for INSTANT data recovery. I have not spent any extra money for this: none of the drives are sitting unused(not necessary) / have not bought more than needed, AND they came cheap: there are plenty of specials around for 40cents a gigabyte or less.

Now, when a failure arrives, likely after the drive model is no longer made, & also taking into account the falling prices of all components, i'll not be paying the price of two or three drives at some online auction, and double that again for immediate shipping-- only to find upon arrival that it's damaged or not the model specified(forget commercial entitities, specialty resellers know what you need it for, and their prices reflect that-- pretty close to the fees for professional data recovery).

3. I registered all of them electronically & snail mail to make the warranty official( though this doesn't help much for data recovery-- you get anotther one in return, that's it).

4. Several hard drives, each with multi-partitions--all data, program files & windows folders containing other crucial data & settings, as well as the swap file migrated elsewhere. Think about it: why keep one drive thrashing incessantly: between the OS, programs, temp folders & swap file, data files-- if all these simultaneous operations dont have to wait to be done on one / are each being done in separate ones, system performance has to be better-- and best: you're cutitng down the wear & tear by a multiple factor.

Other advantages of this:

say something in your OS got corrupted-- instead of spending anxious days troubleshooting, just format the os partition, reinstall, apply the autopatcher, and migrate back your folders with your desktop, settings, favorites, etc. Easy, peasy Japanesy... and,

this allows turning off such system resource hoggers as windows Restore & other apps' real-time file protection/scanning.

Peace.

[puntoMX]

I think that all hard drives come with bad sectors-- right straight from the manufacturing plant-- though small in number and marked off:  there is no 100% perfection on this planet<g>.

True, but those ones you will never see normaly .

[horsecharles]

you're totally right-- Reminds me of that cockamamie conspirational theory floating around the web(i may have a detail or two wrong, but it basically went like): because there's a extra space that makes up for when bad sectors are found-- that all hard drives had way larger capacity than labelel, or all had the same capacity--- and that companies just labeled them as different-sized for profit reasons(cheaper to manufacture just one size/kind, yaddah, yadah). The proof given was that they would partition a drive to show a total size double-triple what it originally was labeled as... the plans for this were all over the web, some actually for sale...

Caveat Emptor.

¡go san luis potosí! ¡go ana bárbara!

[puntoMX]

¡go san luis potosí!  ¡go ana bárbara!

offtopic: Your telling me this? It´s bar? (I´m Dutch but living in Querétaro ) EDIT: ow That one, saw her on TV with those big ones , and thanx for the compliment (what postings, or that´s a joke?)

Lets make our HDDs 2 times as big LOL

[horsecharles]

no bar excuse my eecumings style-- Ana Barbara is one of the top 5 female singers in Mexico... she's getting the plastic surgery mania, though-- she also wants to be twice as big in certain areas.....

All the best to you-- I have learned plenty from your insightful posts.

[abudaood]

thanks to all

im very happy about your help and i will try to do the best

thank you agin

have a wonderfull day