Hi,
My computer hard disk having 40 gb capacity has developed 475,000 bytes Bad Sector in primary partition C (9.29 gb). This HDD has two other partitions D (18.6 gb) and E (9.29 gb). This baracuta disk is 1&1/2 years old. Please tell me how can I repair this bad sectors? If I do not repair, does it make problem in future? I have heard some HDD repairing tool like HDD Regenerator. Does this tool repair bad sectors completely?
PleaseHelp.
S Bhattacharya

Norton rcomends a low level format to a hard drive , but considering you have so many bad sectors, 1. You can try Regenerator, or 2.Perform a low level format .
A low level format takes a considerable ammount of time to fully erase the drive, that still does not garintee that the bad sectors will dissapear.

That is not very much in bad sectors, but indicate a problem of some sort. The drive could be damaged and going bad, or there could be problems caused by powering the system off while the disk is still being used. Normally good quality drives should not show any bad area's because they have alternate assignment of bad tracks built into them.

Sometimes you can recover the use of these bad areas with a low level format and the reload the whole system. But with most drives all this is doing is forcing the use of the alternate areas of the disk reserved for replacing bad areas. Or you can just run SCANDISK in Thorough mode a few times over night and let it flag these area so that they are not used. Keep in mind that 475,000 bytes is only 0.001% of your 40GB disk drive. A very small amount.

If additional defects continue to show up, then consider looking for a replacement drive.

I would save any files you wanted to keep on a CD-R and then low level format C:\ drive and re-install Windows onto that partition.
If low level formatting does not cure it, it's probably physical damage as opposed to corrupt data. If it showed more bad sectors in a few months time, I would be looking at a new hard drive. They have come down in price. If it gets worse, Windows may not load (depending where the damage is).

Low level formatting worked for me.
www.killdisk.com
Free and works from a floppy.