Date: Tue, 12 Aug 2003 09:54:49 +0000 From: "Matthew Hanson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: [LIB] Now bad physical HDD blocks [EMAIL PROTECTED]
From: Raymond <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
I ran an old version of Norton Disk Doctor which found 4-5 bad blocks and marked them. But the partition was an extended logical D: at the end of the drive right after the C: primary partition, the only other partition on the drive.
OK I'm presuming that should read "But the partition that the bad blocks were found on was an extended logical D ..."? Otherwise, I'm somewhat lost ...
Right.
It took 6+ hours to scan and mark the approx. 6GB D: partition. I really needed that area of data to be a primary partition. So thinking DD had written the info on the bad blocks to a partition table somewhere, I ran Partition Magic (at this point having upgraded to 8.0) to convert the D: logical drive to a hidden primary drive for doing tests with various flavors of Win98.
*blink* *blink* OK I missed something ... why do you need it to be a hidden primary?
I have a habit of keeping partitions with different copies of Windows OSs hidden from each other. I seem to recall warnings about doing this in order to prevent one getting into the other and playing havoc.
I'm now running another 6+ hour surface scan with DD, and am wondering if I'll have better luck this time.
I'd run IBM's drive fitness tester (search for DFT on the IBM site). That'll take a while to run, I can't remember if that has a data destructive mode in it though (if it does and you can afford to lose the data there, run that as well).
I have it running a 2nd time as I write. It already found the bad data blocks the 1st run and then failed to repair the sectors and generated a failure log I can use to return the drive.
Hmmm... the 2nd run through didn't report any problems even though I heard the drive scartching away at a few classic spots in the process. And the 1st error log that found problems was wriiten over with a blank one. :-/
Off for a 3rd try... then maybe another run at NDD marking the bad blocks. Without an error file reporting failure code of 0x70 representing a "Defective Device", I won't be able to return it for a replacement for another to fail again... :-/
If that fails, it'll tell you if it is the dreaded 75GXP bug in which case the drives are pretty much a writeoff, the bad clusters will slowly keep increasing in number, taking random chunks of data with them (at least thats what happened in my experience) ...
How 'bout herding the bad blocks into a hidden partition and not using it. Think the cancer will spread anyway?
PS: As I recall, there was a problem with these IBM DeskStar 75GXP drives. Wonder if IBM will replace it gratis 2+ years after the purchase.
....replacements! Given that the 75GXP is long since discontinued, you might get lucky and get 120GXPs or better :-D
Oooo... that'd be great! I've probably got about 9 months to go on the 3 year warranty.
I'm running NDD after the 3rd run of DFT found no problems in 1/10th the time the 1st run took and about 1/5th of the time of the 2nd run for some reason. Will report back later
Thanks for the tips Raymond!
Ciao,
Matt
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