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| Thread ID: 93250 | 2008-09-09 06:59:00 | Bad sectors in HDD | Krisby5 (13221) | Press F1 |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 703842 | 2008-09-09 06:59:00 | Hi all,I recently got a free copy of Vista (business edition) from blogs.msdn.com So I decided that to create a duel boot system (with XP), I downloaded GParted and tried shrinking my hard drives existing partition and creating a smaller partition for Vista but GParted came up with a message saying that ive got 48 bad sectors and cannot edit the partition. My HDD is also less than 6 months old. So I ran chkdsk /f/r and after that completed I tried partitioning my HDD again and I got the same error message. So I did abit of googleing and apparently defragging before trying to edit partitions is a good thing to do. I defragged my HDD then tried to edit the partition again but alas GParted found bad sectors and refused to do anything. I went on the Seagate website (www.seagate.com) (my HDD is a 320GB Seagate Barracuda) and downloaded one of their diagnostic tools, it also found 48 errors and it gave me the option of fixing the errors. If I said yes fix the errors, could I lose data from my HDD? |
Krisby5 (13221) | ||
| 703843 | 2008-09-09 07:33:00 | Errors are just what they say they are. | PENTIUM (426) | ||
| 703844 | 2008-09-09 07:49:00 | If a Hard Drive has bad sectors then they are places data can not be written to, in other words dead spots, if a sector(s) fail you can lose data. To test the drive download HDD Regenerator (http://www.dposoft.net/) - Download the trial, install it on a PC and make a bootable CD, boot from that CD, the program will look for failed sectors on the drive, and if it finds any will show in RED. The program says it fixes bad sectors, but personally I wouldn't trust any drive with failing sectors, once they start they dont stop. The trial version will "fix" 1 sector at a time, then a rerun is required - being 320Gb it would pay to leave it running over night as it will take several hours. BUT once it finds more than 1 it confirms the drives bad- My HDD is also less than 6 months old. being only 6 moths old means nothing - Hard drives can have bad sectors from day 1 - a Drive with bad Sectors is replaceable under warranty - but save any data first, as once its sent in they simply give you back another drive - usually empty unless the shop is kind enough ( or charges you) to copy the drive first. Generally though many copy programs will spit the dummy and fail if a drive has bad sectors. The tool from Seagate will simply mark the sectors as bad and they wont show again, it doesn't actually fix it. |
wainuitech (129) | ||
| 703845 | 2008-09-09 08:11:00 | Cheers wainuitech, I brought the harddrive from Ascent. I guess i'll return it and get a replacement drive | Krisby5 (13221) | ||
| 703846 | 2008-09-09 08:18:00 | Thats the best bet Krisby, better to find while the drives in warranty than later on. Mind you Seagtes do have good warranties, but you dont want to lose data with a suspect drive. |
wainuitech (129) | ||
| 703847 | 2008-09-09 08:31:00 | I specifically chose Seagate for their warranty now ive just got the nuisance of backing up everything and reinstalling . . Could I ghost my entire drive? Is there any free or open source ghosting software? |
Krisby5 (13221) | ||
| 703848 | 2008-09-09 10:41:00 | I specifically chose Seagate for their warranty now ive just got the nuisance of backing up everything and reinstalling . . Could I ghost my entire drive? Is there any free or open source ghosting software? I forgot to put include does anyone know any free or open source Imaging software? |
Krisby5 (13221) | ||
| 703849 | 2008-09-09 10:48:00 | Seagate has a free one called Discwizard (www.seagate.com) - it is basically a free cutdown version of Acronis true image. But as mentioned it may spit the dummy on a drive with bad sectors. Scroll down the page a bit,Links in the center of the page - Softwares on the left hand side - PDF manual on the right. |
wainuitech (129) | ||
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