Storage Solutions Can a drive with bad sectors be used by forfeiting space?

Slayer88

Slayer88

Adept
Hi all, I have a few drives that have bad sectors. I would like to know, what if it is a 2TB drive and I keep 500gb unallocated, are there ways to ensure the bad sectors are pushed there? Are there any tools to do this? I'm pretty sure they r physical BS. When I run quick tests it shows the drive all green but if I do a long test it shows the BS.
TIA
 
Back in the day there used to be option to do low level format too....but these days yes, just a full format with check for bad sectors option should be sufficient.
 
Ankit2306 said:
Try hdat2 in dos ..that's the tool you need .
Click to expand...
Thanks, will check it out
ankushv said:
I'm quite sure if you do a full format the drive firmware will make sure the bad sectors are not written to and marked unusable .
Click to expand...
Have tried a full format, it fails, quick format completes successfully
vishalrao said:
Back in the day there used to be option to do low level format too....but these days yes, just a full format with check for bad sectors option should be sufficient.
Click to expand...
Hey please see my note above.
 
Slayer88 said:
Thanks. I have only kept games on the drive..so nothing of value.
Click to expand...
Good, I have an anecdote. I had a bad drive, and I was seeing new bad sectors appearing regularly. I made 3 partitions in it, put all those partitions in mirroring software RAID (Raid-1), reduced storage space by a factor of 3. I used it as a backup of last resort - to be used when original and backup both failed.

It served me well for 2 years, there was no real data loss from that drive. I retired the drive with state honours after converting the system to a pure SSD system.
 
Slayer88 said:
Thanks, will check it out

Have tried a full format, it fails, quick format completes successfully

Hey please see my note above.
Click to expand...
If full format fails then something is surely amiss . The drive may fail more sooner than expected . If it was just bad sectors after a full format and they didn't increase over time the drive could surely last a few years .
 
Slayer88 said:
Hi all, I have a few drives that have bad sectors. I would like to know, what if it is a 2TB drive and I keep 500gb unallocated, are there ways to ensure the bad sectors are pushed there? Are there any tools to do this? I'm pretty sure they r physical BS. When I run quick tests it shows the drive all green but if I do a long test it shows the BS.
TIA
Click to expand...
What guarantee if 500gb wont contain any bad sectors?
Sectors aren't sequentially aligned or occur but randomly as well.

Also, you have no manual authority to manually shift these sectors either at start or end of the overall size. Only win 98 offered surface scan where such sectors were moved at the end of the drive and also marked bad for not storing any data.
But if the sectors are at initial starting ones then such drives cannot be used for booting as eventually mbr error will render booting impossible.

Use Hirens boot which have few tools to help mark and move such sectors.
 
Last edited:
nRiTeCh said:
What guarantee if 500gb wot contain any bad sectors?
Sectors aren't sequentially aligned or occur but randomly as well.

Also, you have no manual authority to manually shift these sectors either at star or end of the overall size. Only win 98 offered surface scan where such sector were moved at the end of the drive and also marked bad for not storing any data.
But if the sectors are the initially starting ones then such drives cannot be used for booting as eventually mbr error will render booting impossible.

Use Hirens boot which have few tools to help mark and move such sectors.
Click to expand...
Thanks man..i have a copy of Hirens boot disk somewhere..will try it out!
 
I had a new computer that had a drive with bad sectors near the middle of the platter. I never knew there was a problem until I started to fill the drive-up with programs. It would install ok but failed when trying to run the program. The DskChk found the problem. The drive had to be replaced.
Unless you have run a program like DskChk to check a drive, you don’t know if you have a problem or not. Mine formatted ok, but the problem would return later when attempting to load programs. it was a strange situation. This was when we were using DOS and drives were new hardware.
Generally, you don’t see a lot of problems on today's HDD, like bad sectors in a drive. They are pretty reliable. Being estimated to retain data for 10 years is a sign of memory reliability.
  1. Mark an “X” on the drive to distinguish it as not being the first choice to use. This “X” indicates the drive has had a problem in the past and you will not mix it up with good drives.
  2. Run DskChk to repair and recover what you can, save everything off of the drive unless you have a backup drive, and of course, you do, right?
    Keeping a drive with a known problem can be a risk to your data, can be problematic, and will require additional maintenance effort from you.
    if you are keeping the drive you will run DskChk to isolate the bad sectors and attempt recovery of your data.

    From this point on, should you keep the drive, you will need to do periodic DskChk tests to see if the sector loss has increased in size or if it is contained. It may be reasonable to perform a DskChk before using, or once a day. If it continues to pass the check, you can lengthen the time span to a week, then a month.
 
Back
Top