Bad sectors in Storage device

I have a friend that has a 3-4 month old Inspiron 9100. It's top of the line, 512 RAM, 3.4 processor, 256 mb radeon graph card, 100 gb storage. She started having problems with a few programs, wireless internet stopped working, somebody told her to run an error check on the c and it came up with errors. I ran chkdsk and it said 4 kb of bad sectors. She talked to dell and they're already sending her a new harddrive. What does this mean? 4kb of bad sectors? Is it a hardware thing or could it have been fixed by reformatting? Thanks.

I'd take my cue from Dell, if they could have gotten away with a format rather than a new drive I'm sure they would have.

With a scandisk, and I believe a CHKDSK, it marks the bad sectors and clusters so that when you reformat the OS won't use those areas. Generally soon after, further scans find new bad areas.

Hope this helps

This link shows the disk areas if you're interested.

http://www.comptechdoc.org/hardware/...harddrive.html

Check the power supply. If it can't put out enough juice, or if it is bad... That would explain everything.


When the power fluctuates, bad sectors get written to the HD, it can interfere with or damage hardware, and all kinds of other bad stuff.


Oh yeah... It might be gremlins.

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Originally posted here by dantesheaven
I have a friend that has a 3-4 month old Inspiron 9100. It's top of the line, 512 RAM, 3.4 processor, 256 mb radeon graph card, 100 gb storage. She started having problems with a few programs, wireless internet stopped working, somebody told her to run an error check on the c and it came up with errors. I ran chkdsk and it said 4 kb of bad sectors. She talked to dell and they're already sending her a new harddrive. What does this mean? 4kb of bad sectors? Is it a hardware thing or could it have been fixed by reformatting? Thanks.

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Inspiron 9100 its really a cool Laptop to have :cool: . Regarding the problem why worrying when they are giving a new Harddisk. Anyways Bad sectors are hardware failures may be due to power failure and some other reason. Further you can read from the following link.
http://www.antionline.com/showthread...ght=bad+sector

Hmmm..........

A 4k error on a 100Gb drive?...........they lose more than that at the factory :D It is ONE sector?

Go for the new drive, In the meantime I will await your next post.................OK they will have to reinstall, which will probably clear the "real" problem:)

Cheers

Wow, i was just looking back at my old posts and found I had never followed up on this. The replacement harddrive worked, but since then she's gone through 2 more, on number 4 atm, seems like they only work so long.

Formatting alone won't cure bad sectors. By running scandisk you tag the bad sectors and the OS should be smart enough to not use them.

The concern probably is that if the device is that new and had no trauma then the number of bad sectors will continue to grow between scandisks and thus make it harder for the OS.

Getting the mfr to replace the drive is a good thing.


I shouldn't have posted, when I searched new posts the original post came up and I missed the date.

Hi, The inspiron 9100 does have a reputation for frying things, 4 HDDs in 2 years does seem a bit excessive though. Make sure that all ventilation ports and fans are clean and the fans are running properly. Depending on how you mainly use the machine it might be worth investing in a cooling pad.

I have the same problems with my hard disk and I found something at Fix hdd bad sectors Good luck I hope you will resolve your problem.

I would lean towards a flaky powersupply myself...or dose she kick box around a lot ?

Hi bballad, I did think about the PSU myself, but we are talking 4 units in 2~2.5 years here. In my experience a bad PSU will kill things a lot more regularly than that and should itself have died in that time frame? :)