Bad sector on the HDD unrepairable?...or something else?

Here's the situation...

The Vista defrag 'analysis' catches a HDD surface problem and hangs during defrag. My Iolo Professional detects it also and tells me that it can't perform a defrag due to a fault in the disk.

Here's what chapping my ass, though...

I perform a CHKDSK during startup (scheduled, obviously), and it works it's way through 80% of the final stage of the check (free space) and then it jumps to 100% suddenly and restarts my computer.


I can only assume that it's a physical problem with the HDD, but why is CHKDSK not isolating it and fixing/ignoring it?

Did I miss a memo or something?

Here's the genesis of the problem...

I was trying to upgrade to Vista Ultimate and the upgrade ultimately failed due to the absence of my Winlogin/on (i forget which it was). Not corruption...just absence. Yet when I rolled the upgrade back, everything works fine. WTF?

Any ideas?

O

Hi there O~

Sounds like you need a new HDD.

OK, what I would suggest is that you go to the HDD manufacturer's site and get their diagnostic toolkit. Use that to perform a detailed scan, and see what it says. Don't run the quick scan, it will probably still pass that.

I am afraid that the Windows tools are not the sharpest in the box :(

The manufacturer's toolkit is more likely to be able to fix the problem, and if it can't, it will give you the error code you will need if the drive is still under warranty. Also, these tools run off external media rather than the possibly damaged drive itself.

They also tend to have a tool for interpreting the S.M.A.R.T. logs, although that system isn't as clever as it might be :D I guess it only spots around 60% of problems, and it is really only intended to give a pre-emptive warning.

When you get a drive, it has a certain amount of space reserved for error recovery. Once that is filled up, you start to get drive error messages. This does not necessarily mean that the drive is actually damaged.

Problems can arise with the magnetic writing of data such that the drive only "looks" as if it is damaged. This situation can be recovered, but the software (HDD Regenerator) costs as much as a decent new HDD, so I only recommend it for support engineers or departments.

Try these:

http://www.auslogics.com/disk-defrag/index.php

http://sourceforge.net/project/platf..._platform=4745

Two free defragmenters that should work with Vista.

This is the link to "HDD Regenerator"

http://www.dposoft.net/

It costs 60 bucks (USD 60), but there is a trial which should at least tell you if it would work?

:)

Windows tools are like retards...you try really hard to involve them...to not make fun of them...but then they start drooling, raving and pooping their pants...thats when you quit and go home

Well,

Quote:

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Windows tools are like retards...you try really hard to involve them...to not make fun of them...but then they start drooling, raving and pooping their pants...thats when you quit and go home

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I look on them more as "politicians"........... like they are fair weather friends. When everything is OK they work just fine, when it isn't, they don't.

Just look at the toolsets used by people with serious support involvement...... they are all third party and preferably boot and run outside of Windows.:)

Hitachi has a nice tool called DFT. It will scan your hdd and tell you if its bad and give you an error code. If it detects an error, the screen turns red and depending on the problem may give you an option to try and fix the problem.

DFT is a free download from http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/download.htm#DFT

I would be rather wary of using a tool from one HDD manufacturer on a drive made by another.

;)

Replace the drive.

If you have the media for the previous version of Windows you can do a raw fresh install with Vista on a new drive. Then hook up the other drive to get the data off of it and deep six it. Hard drives are PFM (pure F-ing magic) and it sounds like yours is just starting to lose its.

Replace it before you lose your stuff. The new drive will probably be less $ than the copy of Vista

If a drive starts showing bad sectors replace it asap.

With SCSI drives you could mark them as bad and move on.. IDE (and S-ATA) drives have a spare bit of space on them. The marking and mapping of bad sectors happens automagicly within the drive's firmware. If bad sectors start showing up it means that spare bit of space on the drive is full. Time for a replacement.

Thanks, guys. Not exactly what I wanted to hear, but it's what I expected. It's a Western Digital HDD, BTW. I've never had issues with their drives before, but I guess a bad apple here and there is to be expected. I do have a backup drive and can image the important stuff to that one and retransfer after I get the new one that I will have to buy :( (the damaged one is beyond warranty). I'm going to try the tools that Nihil suggested, but I fear that they won't help (Better to expect the worst in case a miracle happens).

Just as a side-thought, could it be possible to identify the bad sector(s) of the disk and create a partition around it, kind of like a physical quarantine? Or does it not quite work that way?

Also, why would the upgrade tell me that there is a bad MBR and it can't continue, but the upgrade rollback returns me to working order? I thought the MBR was in a fixed area on the HDD. Doesn't make sense to me, unless I am misunderstanding the whole thing.

O

Oops, forgot to mention that Scandisk doesn't report any bad sectors, it just skips over 20% of the free space.

That's a bad thing, isn't it?

Crap :(

O

Hi there O~

Quote:

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Just as a side-thought, could it be possible to identify the bad sector(s) of the disk and create a partition around it, kind of like a physical quarantine? Or does it not quite work that way?

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Manufacturer's drive tools used to work that way, and create a new "recovery area". This would certainly not be detected by scandisk/checkdisk.

Back in the days of having to physically tell your system to park the HDD heads this was generally OK, as the damage was frequently minor physical problems caused by moving the PC without parking the heads first.

Today's HDDs are more sophisticated, so when you hit a problem like this it is generally fatal. Well, I certainly wouldn't recommend the continued use of such a drive :shocked:

Quote:

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Also, why would the upgrade tell me that there is a bad MBR and it can't continue, but the upgrade rollback returns me to working order? I thought the MBR was in a fixed area on the HDD. Doesn't make sense to me, unless I am misunderstanding the whole thing.

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The "upgrade" is effectively going to reinstall, so it checks the drive condition. Rollback is just an internal recovery so does not do this.

[QUOTE][Oops, forgot to mention that Scandisk doesn't report any bad sectors, it just skips over 20% of the free space.
That's a bad thing, isn't it?/QUOTE]

Strange, but I have noticed that.............. I thought it was possibly my imagination but it does seem to finish a lot faster than it starts off?

I really feel the need to do a bit of research on this, as you have raised a question to which I do not have a definitive answer.

I suspect that when Scandisk/Checkdisk hits the area that still has the original manufacturer's "pattern" on it, it skips the testing. As a technician I would not find that acceptable in a "proper" diagnostic tool. However, I can see Microsoft's viewpoint; in that these are "user tools" to be employed when you have problems, or to avoid them. So, you are only interested in the part of the drive that you have been or are still using?

The never used part represents: "joys still to be experienced" :lildevil:

That is a complete guess by the way :D

I do have a matching pair of "virgin" drives I can experiment with. I am thinking of:

1. Load OS onto a drive as it comes out of the box.
2. Nuke the second drive with DBAN or Eraser and load the same OS
3. Run Checkdisk, and see if there is a difference.

If I overwrite with random data, it should look different from the manufacturer's "pattern", I would have thought?

Quick update.

I've used 3 different 'freeware' tools to scan my current HDD. None of them have detected any problems with the physical condition of the disk. No bad sectors reported either.

The only thing that I can think of is a partition problem. I used to dual boot this Win Vista with Kubuntu Linux.

I ran FDisk upon startup and saw that there was an extended DOS partition in the report, but when I tried to purge it, FDisk didn't recognize it.

It's gotta be the partition thing. Nothing else besides the 'upgrade' and the Windows defrag are returning errors. Are there any FREE tools that could help me here, a la 'Partition Magic'.

I just wiped my backup clean, and am ready to ghost my current HDD to it, but i'd rather not, considering the time it would take to do so (and the time to return it to my main HDD after wiping it)

Specs- Main HDD is a 250GB 7200RPM Western Digital, Backup is a 60GB Seagate 60GB 5xxxRPM

Any thoughts?

O

The Auslogics defrag that Nihil suggested would work like a charm for anyone, BTW.

O

Hi Ouroboros,

Try Ranish Partition Manager:

http://www.ranish.com/

:)

Thanks, nihil, I will give that a shot.