Bad sectors on harddrive

I have a Maxtor 300 GB external hard drive, which I formatted using the Windows formatting tool.
I intended to back up all of my personal data onto this drive, but when I did so, the system froze and needed a hard reset.
I then scanned the harddrive using chkdsk and found that it had 8kb in bad sectors.
chkdsk /f and chkdk /r have failed to solve this problem.
I also tried re-formatting thge drive but got the same result.

Does anyone know any way of repairing the drive (it is ca. 1 1/2 yrs old)?
Or is it better to buy a new drive if I intend to use it for backups?

Thanks in advance for any help.

 

In the first instance I would download the manufacturers utilities to check the drive. For example Seagate use Seatools (Maxtor are now part of Seagate and perhaps Seatools will work).

Once you have run this utility you should have a better idea of the problem. Once that is complete I would then irrrespective zero fill the drive. This will wipe all the data on your drive including the MBR and partition tables.

You can then partition and reformat the drive and see if it works.

Failing that if the drive is only 1.5 yrs old perhaps it has a 3 yr warranty under which you can get a replacement.

Good Luck

 

Hi there,
Thanks for your help.
I will try out Seatools this evening.
You also suggest zero filling the drive.
Could you tell me the best way to go about doing this?
Is there some kind of tool available on majorgeeks or is there an option to do this in Windows.

Thanks once again.

 

I'm quite sure he meant to say that Seatools can be used to do zero fill the drive.

 

Unfortunately not.
I just downloaded and installed SeaTools for Windows from the official Seagate site.
It recognizes the Maxtor as being an external USB drive, but will only let me carry out two tests on it (simple short test & simple long test).
When I run them, both of these tests fail after a few seconds (the drive makes aweird whiring sound).
The tool doesn't offer any reason why these tests have failed.
There are also several other tests that the tool offers (eg. longer self-test), but when I try and select them for the Maxtor I get the message "not supported".
Nowhere can I see any option to zero fill the drive.

Can anyone help?

 

Hmmm, I'm surprised to hear that. I'm not familiar with SeaTools but have used Western Digital's Data Lifequard Tools to zero-fill a drive. I assumed SeaTools could do the same.

Does that drive have a 3-yr warranty, as risk_reversal mentioned?

 

The option to zero fill the drive was on Seagate's 'Disc Manager' which is now called 'Disc Wizard' (i think ..pretty sure).

Just download Disc Wizard, create the floppy(ies), they will be bootable. When booted have a look in the menu and you will see the option to zero fill. Other third party progs will also zero fill a drive but personally, I just feel more comfortable using the manufacturers own.

Also make sure that you create floppy diskettes and run them from a dos prompt.

Good Luck

P.S If the drives fail the short/long test my hunch is that you have had it, but zero filling still worth a shot. A whirling noise does not sound encouraging. If you have any important data on the drive then there are several avenues available, one being to place the drive in the freezer for about 20 mins then pluging drive into the pc and hope that it works and allows you the time to get your info out.

 

Cheers for all the help.
The option to zero fill the hard disk is indeed in on Seagate's 'Disc Wizard'
I have just started that running and it is telling me that it will take 17 hours to complete.
I'll stick another post here tomorrow to let you know if that worked.
Thanks again

 

17 hours seems a bit long (but not excessively so). It is a lengthy process though.

Just let it complete, then run the Seagate short disc diagnosis. If there are still errors on the diagnostics after the zero fill then I think the drive is probably toast.

Personally, if a drive that I was using was making a whirly (metallic type) noise as you have described, I would get very very nervous.

Good Luck

 

So, I'm back.
The good news is that it worked!
Thank you very much (esp. risk_reversal) for the good advice. This was really a big help and saved me buying a new hard drive.
In case anyone else stumbles over this thread with the same problem as me, here's how I did it:

I downloaded SeaGate Disk Wizard from the SeaGate website.
I then used Disk Wizard to make a boot disk.
I started Disk Wizard from the boot disk, where I could then zero fill the hard drive.
This solved the problem and removed the bad sectors frm my harddrive when neither 'chkdsk /r' nor reformatting the drive had helped.

Thanks once again.

 

Well done Jim.

Obviously the error on the HDD was a 'logical' error which zero filling the drive corrected rather than a 'physical' error which would have been somewhat terminal.

Good Luck

 

I have the same problem but i dont have a floppy drive, so what are my other options. and do they exist.

 

Download the hard drive diagnostic tool and burn it to a CD. If you can't do that on your computer, find another computer to do it. Then, boot your computer from that CD. It should work the same as if booted from a floppy. You may need to access your BIOS screens and set CD-ROM as the initial boot device.

 

Depending on how old your pc is, there could also be a bios option to boot from a usb flash drive so that could be another possible option.