Hello, I am currently have a issue with my hard drive. It seems that i have aquaired some damaged blocks on my drive. Is there a way to make sure my mac does not write or try too read these blocks as it is causing problems. I want to tell the computer that these blocks are off limit never to be writen too again! :) Any method is welcome, but preferbaly not involving reformationg the drive. Thanks p.s. i though OS X did this automatically?

Actually all HD's have bad blocks. The HD has a built in capacity to store where the bad blocks are and marks them off limits. This is transparent to the OS. Once the HD runs out of room to re-allocate bad blocks, then the OS, or disk utility will start to detect them. Mac OS 9 and prior was actually better at this and had it's own limited software for this task. With OS-X, a side from tech tool pro, I don't know. I know you the user can go into the unix command line prompt and "manually" re-allocate each block :) good luck with that. The best way is just to back everything up on an external drive, boot off a OS 9 CD(if you PB will allow it) and run the old and trusted drive setup utility. You really should run it(after a back up!!) and re-format the drive with the zero fill option selected. Alot of times the bits actually get stuck on the HD instead of die altogether and a few runs with Zero-fill will free them up again. Best of luck! Core 2 Duo 1.86 2GB DDR 667 ASUS P5L-MX Nvidia 8500GT 500/1000