Re-Assigning bad disk cylinder?

[ArtReid]

I seem to remember way back when, there was a program (DOS I believe) that
could scan a hard drive and re-assign bad cylinders. Is that program still
around/relevant and is there an updated windows version of it out there for
Windows?

 

[Wolf K]

I seem to remember way back when, there was a program (DOS I believe)
that could scan a hard drive and re-assign bad cylinders. Is that
program still around/relevant and is there an updated windows version of
it out there for Windows?

Google on "hard disk maintenance and repair utilities". I found:
http://softwaresolution.informer.com/Hard-Disk-Repair-Tool/

HTH

 

[Robin Bignall]

I seem to remember way back when, there was a program (DOS I believe) that
could scan a hard drive and re-assign bad cylinders. Is that program still
around/relevant and is there an updated windows version of it out there for
Windows?

Chkdsk / R ? It's part of Windows.

 

[Paul]

I seem to remember way back when, there was a program (DOS I believe)
that could scan a hard drive and re-assign bad cylinders. Is that
program still around/relevant and is there an updated windows version of
it out there for Windows?

The scan would be for clusters now, wouldn't it ?

Look for references to CHKDSK and $BadClus.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ntsf

"8 $BadClus A file that contains all the clusters marked as
having bad sectors. This file simplifies cluster
management by the chkdsk utility, both as a place
to put newly discovered bad sectors, and for
identifying unreferenced clusters."

I hadn't heard of anything at the cylinder level. On modern drives,
they hardly know what CHS is. (It's used by the software, and it is
"fake".) Modern drives use LBA, and due to the zoned formatting
of the platter, the circuit board on the disk drive, translates
LBA, into a stepped CHS of some sort. (The zones have a different
number of sectors per track. You can see this somewhat, in the
graph drawn by HDTune benchmark.) At the operating system level, you'd
have a hard time, translating a linear address, into some area
on the disk that forms a physical circle. There is little way for
the OS to know what the actual geometry looks like. So instead, they
look for bad sectors, and wall off any clusters that have one or
more bad sectors in them. The cluster is marked, so it won't get
reused.

HTH,
Paul

 

[philo]

I seem to remember way back when, there was a program (DOS I believe)
that could scan a hard drive and re-assign bad cylinders. Is that
program still around/relevant and is there an updated windows version of
it out there for Windows?

Very possible the mfg of your hd has such a utility...
but honestly, I would not take a chance...I'd replace the drive.

 

[Paul]

Very possible the mfg of your hd has such a utility...
but honestly, I would not take a chance...I'd replace the drive.

A person could also partition around a bad spot.

If I was doing that though, that drive would go in my "spares - cannot
be trusted" pile. We have to keep the hard drive industry going, by
buying new drives every year. (They're like buying toilet paper.)

Paul

 

[Sjouke Burry]

I seem to remember way back when, there was a program (DOS I believe)
that could scan a hard drive and re-assign bad cylinders. Is that
program still around/relevant and is there an updated windows version
of it out there for Windows?

chkdsk? Which assigned bad block code to cylinder(s).
That made DOS skip over them.
Newer disks just re-locate them to spare tracke, and shows no bad blocks.

 

[Iceman]

X-No-Archive: Yes

[11 quoted lines suppressed]

A person could also partition around a bad spot.

If I was doing that though, that drive would go in my "spares - cannot
be trusted" pile. We have to keep the hard drive industry going, by
buying new drives every year. (They're like buying toilet paper.)

Do you think they may eventually become cheaper than toilet paper? ;-)

 

[Paul]

X-No-Archive: Yes

[11 quoted lines suppressed]

A person could also partition around a bad spot.

If I was doing that though, that drive would go in my "spares - cannot
be trusted" pile. We have to keep the hard drive industry going, by
buying new drives every year. (They're like buying toilet paper.)

Do you think they may eventually become cheaper than toilet paper? ;-)

Depends on how much toilet paper goes up in price

Paul

 

[Charlie+]

I seem to remember way back when, there was a program (DOS I believe) that
could scan a hard drive and re-assign bad cylinders. Is that program still
around/relevant and is there an updated windows version of it out there for
Windows?

Hiran's boot disk has a number of good disk utilities, (both DOS and
Windows) which allow sector manipulation. Also disk testing for sector
access timing to check how reliable the remainder of the disk is. Check
SMART etc. Note if you have a SMART failure disk you cannot reset the
stats to unfail the HDD!
Look for
Hirens.BootCD.15.2.zip
C+

 

[JJ]

I seem to remember way back when, there was a program (DOS I believe) that
could scan a hard drive and re-assign bad cylinders. Is that program still
around/relevant and is there an updated windows version of it out there for
Windows?

You probably meant HDAT2: http://www.hdat2.com/

It's for DOS only and there doesn't seem to be any indication for any future
Windows version. The developer is probably not familiar with Windows
internals since HDAT2 talks directly to the IDE controller, and Windows only
complicate things.

HDAT2 is still usable for SATA drive if the BIOS setting is set to IDE mode.
You can download a boot CD image that boot to DOS and run HDAT2.

Alternatively, try downloading the hard disk tool from the same manufacturer
of your hard disk. e.g.: Maxtor, Seagate, Western Digital, etc. Download
from their own website only. But don't bother downloading if it's in one of
below list and is not a newer version, cause they don't have the required
feature.

- Fujitsu ATA Hard Disk Drive Diagnostic Tool 6.x
- Fujitsu Diagnostic Tool 3.x
- Hitachi Feature Tool 1.x
- Maxtor PowerMax 4.x
- Maxtor PowerMax Diagnostic 3.x
- OnTrack Disk Manager 9.x
- Seagate SeaTools Disc Diagnostic 1.x
- Seagate SeaTools Desktop 3.x

* OnTrack Disk Manager is also known as: IBM Disk Manager, Maxtor MaxBLAST4,
Seagate Disk Manager, Western Digital Data Lifeguard, Western Digital Data
Lifeguard Diagnostics. Up to v11.x.

 

[Andy Burns]

I seem to remember way back when, there was a program (DOS I believe) that
could scan a hard drive and re-assign bad cylinders. Is that program still
around/relevant and is there an updated windows version of it out there for
Windows?

Hard discs have "lied" to the operating system for so long now that I
wouldn't trust them to obey such a utility in any way.

 

[philo]

X-No-Archive: Yes

philo wrote:
[11 quoted lines suppressed]
A person could also partition around a bad spot.

If I was doing that though, that drive would go in my "spares - cannot
be trusted" pile. We have to keep the hard drive industry going, by
buying new drives every year. (They're like buying toilet paper.)

Do you think they may eventually become cheaper than toilet paper? ;-)

Depends on how much toilet paper goes up in price

Paul

Actually as it turns out, $100 worth of hard drives
costs less than $200 worth of toilet paper.

Dumb joke, but I could not contain it.

 

[croy]

I seem to remember way back when, there was a program (DOS I believe) that
could scan a hard drive and re-assign bad cylinders. Is that program still
around/relevant and is there an updated windows version of it out there for
Windows?

You might be thinking of SpinRite, from Gibson Research
Corporation, and written by Steve Gibson.

Not cheap, but the licensing is quite liberal: you can use
it on any machine you like, anywhere--it just has to be YOU
using it.

Gibson has just started working on an update, but his
meticulous style will probably push the release of that out
for some months. The current version is 6.0, and the
proposed, incremental updates in the 6.x series are expected
to be free to registered users. A major upgrade, to version
7 is to follow, but it won't be available for some time.

www.grc.com

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

X-No-Archive: Yes

On Thu, 16 May 2013 19:38:44 -0400, Paul wrote in message
<
philo wrote:
[11 quoted lines suppressed]
A person could also partition around a bad spot.

If I was doing that though, that drive would go in my "spares - cannot
be trusted" pile. We have to keep the hard drive industry going, by
buying new drives every year. (They're like buying toilet paper.)

Do you think they may eventually become cheaper than toilet paper? ;-)

Depends on how much toilet paper goes up in price

Paul

Actually as it turns out, $100 worth of hard drives
costs less than $200 worth of toilet paper.

But can you *prove* that?

Dumb joke, but I could not contain it.

Same here

 

[Jason]

I seem to remember way back when, there was a program (DOS I believe) that
could scan a hard drive and re-assign bad cylinders. Is that program still
around/relevant and is there an updated windows version of it out there for
Windows?

My experience with MANY HD's is that once it begins to show errors it is
just a usually small matter of time until it fails totally...

 

[Shadow]

I seem to remember way back when, there was a program (DOS I believe) that
could scan a hard drive and re-assign bad cylinders. Is that program still
around/relevant and is there an updated windows version of it out there for
Windows?

Just run
chkdsk /f /r c:
from a command line, follow the prompts.

takes a while to complete, but is thorough.

I like Hard Disk Sentinel:

http://www.hdsentinel.com/

It's a simple program that packs a lot of info about your
harddisk, and any others you plug in, including an estimate of how
long the drive will last. Not free.

Though nothing is foolproof when it comes to hard drives.
Backup important data even if the drive is brand new.

[]'s