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| Thread ID: 123091 | 2012-02-02 20:44:00 | HDD - Anything better than CHKDSK for WinXP? | Strommer (42) | Press F1 |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 1257109 | 2012-02-02 20:44:00 | For checking and repairing hard drive errors, is there anything better than CHKDSK for Win XP? I believe Seagate has its own downloadable disk tools, but what about other hard drives? Thanks |
Strommer (42) | ||
| 1257110 | 2012-02-02 21:24:00 | spinrite. www.grc.com it's not cheep but it is very good. chkdsk, is more about checking the file system structure. spinrite, is about check the disk surface. . |
robsonde (120) | ||
| 1257111 | 2012-02-02 22:39:00 | Repairing errors ?? what sort of errors?? what sort of repairs ?? Any HD with bad sectors shouldnt be trusted . The old Dos format had a switch to re-check bad sectors. Some of the manufacturers tools are generic & can be used on most drives . chkdsk /r will do a full surface scan. That usually good enough . |
1101 (13337) | ||
| 1257112 | 2012-02-02 23:37:00 | http://www.hdat2.com/ Free, and works great. Make sure to run executable v4.5.3 as the newer one doesn't actually do anything (yet) |
Agent_24 (57) | ||
| 1257113 | 2012-02-03 01:10:00 | Seatools works on all HDD's for testing not sure about repair. | Alex B (15479) | ||
| 1257114 | 2012-02-03 02:34:00 | There is no HDD repair by software, unless it's a software issue. (Like the recent Seagate firmware problem) Bad sectors can be reallocated but whatever caused them in the first place is likely going to keep causing them. Only filesystems can be repaired by software, but this assumes you're not working on a faulty disk. If you are, copy what you can with Gnu DD Rescue etc and then perform repair\recovery of the filesystem. |
Agent_24 (57) | ||
| 1257115 | 2012-02-05 19:45:00 | :thanks Thanks everyone for the info. I have three PC's that I am upgrading/cleaning, adding new hd's to two of them. Sometimes I keep an old hd (in the case if there is room, unconnected) as a 'last ditch' means of backup, so doing a 'repair' (reallocate bad sectors) would seem to be reasonable. |
Strommer (42) | ||
| 1257116 | 2012-02-05 20:04:00 | In very rare cases a drive can have a faulty sector or two and still be ok, the manufacturers tools will "fix" that. Most of the time though a faulty sector is the beginning of the end and time to throw the drive away. As one example I had a software error on a machine left downloading overnight which meant it continuously tried to write the same bit of data for several hours, and fried that one sector. A zero fill low level format with seatools reallocated the sector and the drive lasted several more years without further problems. Hard drives have a small reserve of hidden capacity for this purpose. Mainly what I'm getting at is it's worth a try to maybe save a drive that you'd otherwise throw out anyway, just don't use it for critical data. |
dugimodo (138) | ||
| 1257117 | 2012-02-05 21:45:00 | HD Sentinel - not free but trial works fine. Free bootable CD version also available. http://www.hdsentinel.com/ www.hdsentinel.com Acronis Drive Monitor www.acronis.com |
Renegade (16270) | ||
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