Hard Drive errors

a1kashur · Jul 1st, 2009, 09:19 PM

I need your help guppies. Hard drive of my laptop have a lot of bad sectors. (corrupted?) Checkdisk does not do much. What can I do to fix hard drive errors?

I have vista installed. 160GB HD with 2GB RAM. Any free software?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

flyinkiwi · Jul 1st, 2009, 10:48 PM

HIren boot disk which has a few good tools in it and its free to download, you could mask the bad sectors or re-create partitions around it depending on where bad sectors are. PQmagic should do the trick, which is on the boot disk.

maroush · Jul 2nd, 2009, 08:10 AM

If it is physical damage, then the sectors can only be marked to be ignored so they are not written to in the future.....i don't think you can use a software to fix something physically broken (although i think there may be software out there that fixes physical damage via remagnetisation...???)

Anyway, most HDD manufacturers offer software on their website that can remap any bad sectors but for the long term you probably need to purchase a new HDD.

a1kashur · Jul 2nd, 2009, 11:16 AM

^ HD is not physically broken. It wouldn't work if it was. It has a lot of bad/corrupted sectors that need to be fixed.

Thanks for your help.

Mirch · Jul 2nd, 2009, 11:24 AM

I agree with Maroush do not be a typical desi . (no disrespect intended) Buy a new HD to save yourself from a potential disaster. Read my thread in AV , which I posted a few minutes ago about why desi do not take good care of their pets and computers.

maroush · Jul 2nd, 2009, 12:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by a1kashur

^ HD is not physically broken. It wouldn't work if it was. It has a lot of bad/corrupted sectors that need to be fixed.

Thanks for your help.

I don't think you understood what i meant by "physical". I referring to sector damage due to , for example, heat. This could be due to the extended contact between head and the drive, thus heat is generated due to friction. As hard drives are extremely heat sensitive, they tend to get damaged over a period of time, thus corrupting the sectors.
HD will still run ofc, but will eventually die....a slow and painful death.

I second Mirch bhai in buying a new one... start copying your important stuff over to somewhere safe

a1kashur · Jul 2nd, 2009, 02:27 PM

I have already moved everything important so I won't lose anything if it just dies. I learned my lesson in 1998.

I'm just trying to get it fixed, if I can. If not I can always buy another.

Gizzy · Jul 6th, 2009, 10:53 AM

Even if you mark them and those sectors dont get used, but still it usually only gets worse. HDD's prices have gone down, its better you even buy used one from eBay or something, then trying to fix this, coz thats a lost case. :-)

Only thing you can do is to put it through a low level format, it might take a little while depending how big is the drive?
But in the end all bad sectors will get marked.