i am looking for software that can scan a drive and find bad sectors a mark them as bad so i can use the rest of the drive, i have a 60gb usb laptop drive which got a bit close to a magnet and now the i has errors at the last 7gb of the drive but i believe that its proberly only 50mb or so, i dont want to partition it and loose 7gb if i can help it

Hi, For Windoze 98 Scandisk will test for and lock out bad sectors. For XP ChkDsk with parameters will do the job. Most all HD manufacturers will have free downloads that will also the the job. Partition Magic will do it. New Drive setups like MAXBLAST will not do it. Good luck, Jim

From my practical experience, any time a HD starts to develop bad sectors, the smart thing to do is to be prepared to replace it.

i_XpUser

I doubt a magnet could damage a HDD unless you had a particularly strong one. Hard drives have strong magnets inside to controll the heads. To damage a Hard drive with a magnet it would need to be strong enough to take the iron out of your blood.. But I agree with XpUser once you start to get bad sectors you should get ready to replace it. If you have a couple of hundred KB in bad sectors you should be ok, but once it gets further it is cause for concern.

Mattwizz3

... meh

Hi, Would assume that Jay really just wants to test the drive. If sectors are bad and continue to appear then for sure the drive is bad. Forgot to mention that ScanDisk should be run THOROUGH Mode. Jim

what happened is my mobile phone cover has a strong magnetic catch that was placed on laptop (by accident) and since that night its had errors, i did a scan and the error is round at about the end of the drive. i have since replaced drive I"m using it for as a backup for about 3 months (its problibly under warranty but it was my fault) it all works fine untill i put the last 7gb on it whitch says write failed, i know its only a small amount of sectors that will be faulty, thats why i need a prog to seal the bad sectors off so i can use the rest of the drive, hope that helps:)

I sent you an e-mail to your address.I found Your member site at EBAY.Just happened to remember visiting your EBAY site.God Bless Australia-From Georgia USA.
Have a nice day John.

Hi Jay, Just make one or more partitions that total 7 Gig less that the total size of the drive. Don,t use the 7 Gig part. I seriously doubt that the magnet was strong enough to effect the HD, but as Electronics is capable of 1,000,000 errors per milisecond any thing could have happened. Good Luck, Jim