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Third Party Check Disk replacement?

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f0dder:
1) friends don't let friends use SpinRite. Just thought I'd have to add it since it was mentioned.

2) this is the first time I've seen S.M.A.R.T report useful data (apart from reallocated sector count) - usually when a drive has failed on me, it has been a head crash with no SMART warnings (but at least I've known because of the noises the drive tends to start making weeks/months/years before the actual head crash :)).

3) the drive *is* damaged. If you can get it replaced under warranty, do so. If you want to get the bad block reallocated, it needs to be written to. A full format of the disk should handle this - even restoring a full disk image should reallocate the sector. But this doesn't fix the problem, you'll likely see more bad sectors later on, and remapped sectors afaik slow things down (because, again afaik, the drive has to seek to it's spare sector pool when serving a request for a reallocated sector - and we all know seeking slows things down).

Ironically, SpinRite would """fix""" this because it's reads and rewrites sectors - but it's no better than formatting the drive, it results in the same old sector remapping... and puts a lot more stress on the drive than a simple format does.

4wd:
1) friends don't let friends use SpinRite. Just thought I'd have to add it since it was mentioned.-f0dder (October 15, 2008, 06:20 PM)
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I'll second this.  From the play around I've had with SpinRite it's a seriously large waste of time IMHO, (and money).

3) the drive *is* damaged. If you can get it replaced under warranty, do so. If you want to get the bad block reallocated, it needs to be written to. A full format of the disk should handle this - even restoring a full disk image should reallocate the sector. But this doesn't fix the problem, you'll likely see more bad sectors later on, and remapped sectors afaik slow things down (because, again afaik, the drive has to seek to it's spare sector pool when serving a request for a reallocated sector - and we all know seeking slows things down).
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This would be the first option to try.

But if you want to get down and dirty then you could try the free Russian tool Victoria, which can do all kinds of wonderful things, (including trashing any data on the drive if you don't know what you're doing - Consider yourself warned).  eg. Remap sectors, read S.M.A.R.T., temperature reading, defect scanning, AAM adjustment, etc, etc.

Here is the translated documentation.

And a link to the page with the download, (download doesn't work through Google Translate - just click on the filename up the top Victoria 4.46b currently), for the (English) Windows version.

There's also a DOS version, which is in Russian, and a self-booting version which I saw on there but can't seem to find again  :huh:  Found it, Russian only, second last link on this page.

No matter, you can always use the Windows version from a BartPE.

EDIT: Oh yeah, it does more than HDDs:

...for testing HDD, FDD, CD / DVD, USB / Flash / SCSI drives under Windows through the API and ports...
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f0dder:
1) friends don't let friends use SpinRite. Just thought I'd have to add it since it was mentioned.-f0dder (October 15, 2008, 06:20 PM)
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I'll second this.  From the play around I've had with SpinRite it's a seriously large waste of time IMHO, (and money).-4wd (October 15, 2008, 07:01 PM)
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Waste of time and money is the least of my concerns.

If somebody starts using SpinRite on a drive with bad sectors and an upcoming head-crash... well... :rip:

PhilB66:
Philb666: I fail to see how that tool can do anything that the regular commandline can't?
-f0dder (October 15, 2008, 06:44 AM)
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You are correct, f0dder.

y0himba:
open a command prompt, type "chkdsk /f /v /r" and hit enter, then type 'y' to allow it to run at next restart.  Then go through the proper shutdown and power the computer off.  Unplug it for 60 seconds.  plug in and start up, depending on the size of the drive the tests may take a while.

Try it and see if it works.

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