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For some reason, There is a bad sector in my Laptop(compaq armarda 1130)HDD..... Its been marked as a bad sector by scandisk and both scandisk and norton utils couldnt remove this.... I've formatted the drive at least 3 times.
Any ideas ?(other then get a new HDD)
Also i cant access the BOIS setup(its always been F10 key with compaq i think)
thanks,
-Andrew
i have succesfully used HD's like this for years by partitioning off the bad sector and not accessing it. Of course this reduces the volume of the drive. then you ought to use the drive as storage rather than a OS because sometimes this marks the beginning of the end anyway
crash
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Try to run scandisk! Run a thorough scan! See whether it will repair it or try some third party sofware to do a low level formating on your HDD!
Note: If you low level format ur HDD, information lost, but Bad sector recover!
Christopher
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Bad sectors are physical errors on the disk and the best the disk utilities can do is to mark the sector as bad so that data is not written onto it.
Sometimes this could be isolated and it will be possible to countinue to use the disk after isolating the bad sector in a partition.
It could also indicate that the disk is giving way and it would be a good idea to backup all your important data.Happy Computing !!
-Kailas.
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A low level format will not repair the bad sector it will just hide it on the drive so that you dont see it.
As Kailas said it is a physical problem with the drive. What happens is over time and ussage of the drive the magnetic coating on the plater starts to break down.
If the sector is currently maked bad then your O/S will not try to store data there.
The best thing to do is use the drive and see if more bad sectors start forming. If they do then replace the drive.
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Try a program called SpinRite from grc.com (not free). It makes scandisk and the like look like little useless trinkets in comparison. It thoroughly tests every sector on the drive and can determine if a sector marked bad really is.
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The way to get into BIOS should be displayed immediately as your system first boots.
Kailas is 100% correct about bad sectors.
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Oh! Izzit the low level formating won't display the bad sector only?
I got a low-level format program which can remove bad sector of the hard disk! As you say, it just hide the bad sector, I believe it eats off the space and how come my disk space won't decrease but remain!
Christopher
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Christopher..
That 1 bad sector/cluster that the low level format removed could have just been a 4k spot on the drive. So yes your drive space will still be about the same.
Low level formating at the manufac... after a drive is made is done to write out any factory defects on the platers.
Bad sectors are defects on the platers.
There is no way to repair the magnetic coating on the plater.
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A LLF won't fix a bad spot. It'll remove the bad sector information (but not the factory defect table). Then you partition and format the drive. If the spot is actually bad and wasn't mismarked then formatting will remark it as bad.
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