At 11:17 PM 10/6/2005 -0400, James Knott wrote:

James Wright wrote:

...

Anyways, what can I do to find out if I have a physical problem with my drive, and if I do, can I mark a section of the hard drive as 'bad' so that it will not be used? I can't afford a new hard drive, and desperately need this laptop as it is my only computer. Thank you for any help or suggestions.

I don't know about marking a section bad, but you can alway create a partition containing the bad area and just not use it.

--

I would have to tell you that XP has been a very solid OS, even if you don't trust MS--as I don't either. There are programs--most of which run on some version of DOS or Windows--which will attempt to find bad sectors, etc. on a drive and mark them. Some of these may run from a floppy, and they may be available free--or maybe not. Try and Google for something that will find bad sectors. Then it may mark them, and protect from trying to format and use them. I'm not sure how this kind of thing works, but it was common 15 years ago, or so, when there were bad sectors frequently found on disks. I don't know if this technology will work for an NTFS file system, or whatever MS uses to format a drive. (It's _not_ fdisk anymore.) I would be unhappy with a drive that had bad sectors in this modern age. I wouldn't trust it. Hard drives are not that expensive nowadays, even the ones that go in laptops. If I am in error here, please correct me. --doug -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. Version: 7.0.344 / Virus Database: 267.11.13/123 - Release Date: 10/6/2005

On 07/10/05, Bryan Tyson wrote:

On Friday 07 October 2005 02:52, Doug McGarrett wrote:

...

I would be unhappy with a drive that had bad sectors in this modern age. I wouldn't trust it.

In my experience, when a drive starts having bad sectors, the end is near. It will just get more and more bad sectors until it becomes unusable. You should back up your data immediately and replace the drive.

Bryan

Every hard drive ships brand new with some bad sectors.... -- ============================================== I am only human, please forgive me if I make a mistake it is not deliberate. ============================================== Take care. Kevan Farmer 34 Hill Street Cheslyn Hay Staffordshire WS6 7HR

Doug McGarrett wrote:

I would have to tell you that XP has been a very solid OS, even if you don't trust MS--as I don't either. There are programs--most of which run on some version of DOS or Windows--which will attempt to find bad sectors, etc. on a drive and mark them. Some of these may run from a floppy, and they may be available free--or maybe not. Try and Google for something that will find bad sectors. Then it may mark them, and protect from trying to format and use them. I'm not sure how this kind of thing works, but it was common 15 years ago, or so, when there were bad sectors frequently found on disks. I don't know if this technology will work for an NTFS file system, or whatever MS uses to format a drive. (It's _not_ fdisk anymore.) I would be unhappy with a drive that had bad sectors in this modern age. I wouldn't trust it. Hard drives are not that expensive nowadays, even the ones that go in laptops. If I am in error here, please correct me.

My understanding is that modern drives automagically map out bad sectors and replace them with spares. And if a drive gets to the point where it runs out of spares and bad sectors become visible, the drive isn't long for this world. Also, formatting is supposed to identify and map out bad sectors. Incidentally, fdisk has never been used to format a drive. It is use to partition a drive. The command in Windows was and as far as I know still is, "format". In Linux, it's "mkfs".