Bad sector found!!

[ambientscape]

Uh!!! I've found about 16KB of bad sector in my C: partition! What should I do now.....is there any free software that can remove the bad sector?

[Peter_S]

ambientscape, a bad sector is a hardware problem, relating to a specific location on one of the hard drive platters. The error correction code of the read/write heads determines whether a particular sector is corrupt and, if so, marks that sector as "bad" and moves the data to another location. By marking the sector as "bad", no new data will be written to the defective sector.

The only reputable retail software program I'm aware of that may (and I stress may) recover the bad sector and make it usable again (marked as a "good" sector) is Gibson Reseach's SpinRite v6.0., available at http://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm

[Leon]

i second the endorsement of SpinRite.... it is a unique and great software that NO serious computer user should be without (at least the knowledge of it's existence).... you WILL need it someday....

[xtypestereotype]

Hitachi's DFT utility can sometimes fix bad sectors really well
It kinda depends on how many you have and how bad they are
I've had a couple of hard drives fixed and they were as good as new...
However, if you have too many there is not much the software can do....

Also, you should use Hitachi's lastest version and not IBM's cause the one from IBM has issues with newer drives but I think IBM updated their version with the one from Hitachi...

http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/download.htm

If you have no luck with DFT, PM me. I know a few other things you could do to try and get rid of it... I have some experience with HDD data-recovery and I'd be glad to help...

[xtypestereotype]

The only reputable retail software program I'm aware of that may (and I stress may) recover the bad sector and make it usable again (marked as a "good" sector) is Gibson Reseach's SpinRite v6.0., available at http://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm

You can also try HDD Regenerator

http://www.dposoft.net/

[ambientscape]

Thanks dude, for your precious help.....but the software that you recommend is way too expensive for me....and I could get a new drive for that.