Hard drive- good or bad

I installed a 500Gb WD SATA harddrive on PC with XP system some time ago and I have used it successfully for a couple of months until I decided to run chkdsk when I got the result "Too many bad sectors". I also ran WD's own disk check feature with similar results. I recently installed Ubuntu Linux and, out of curiosity ran the Linux disk check which gave the results of :-
Bad sectore - None
Disk- Healthy
Any idea why this should be and if there is really is a problem is there any way in which I can quarantine the bad bits to enable a defrag to run?

 

If the hard drive has got to the stage where there are too many bad sectors on it then it is probably not worth keeping it.

However, the fact that Linux says that there are no problems is interesting.

I would recommend restarting the PC with the drive unplugged, boot into windows, then restart and plug the drive back in, then run chkdsk again.

 

Have heard that Linux uses a different format than Windows.
Could the "bad" sectors that are detected be the ones used by Linux?

 

Thanks for the info,tried unplugging and reboot same
result, Uninstalled Linux and same problem. It shoul not be too bad, new HDD Nov 2009 from a trusted supplier. I can read and write to it OK. Someone suggested "low level format" whatever that is.

 

A low level format basically puts a zero in every piece of memory on the HD so that you are basically starting with a blank HD.

A lot of times this will bring an old HD back to working condition. Your HD is not old but may have had a bad or incomplete format when installing XP. The fact that Linux finds no errors is probably because it was only checking the newly formatted Linux partitions and not the part of the drive that included XP.

It is troublesome that WD's diagnostic said too many errors to fix (did you use the extended/Long test?).

If it were me and the drive was a couple of years old I would do a low-level format, reinstall XP and monitor the drive with the WD diagnostic every couple of weeks for a month or two to make sure that errors were not multiplying rapidly. Because the drive is much newer it might be worth going through the warranty process to have it replaced.

It is up to you. If you don't mind clearing the HD and re-installing XP to see how it goes that is definitely an option( the warranty will still be good if things go bad in a few months). If you hate messing with installing the OS and just want it fixed for good then have it replaced now.

Good Luck!

 

Thanks a load Sach2, your post really got me thinking so I shuffled all the stuff on the "Faulty" drive across to My C: Drive, downloaded EASEUS and ended up with a fully functional empty H:/ Drive. Brilliant.

Only one bu##eration factor, not important but annoying:-

My first 2 HDs are C:/ and E:/ and on EASUS,C,E and now H are the drives showing however if I go to "My Computer" a find an additional drive G:/ listed with no size and system called RAW. It is obvious that my amateur fiddling to get EASUS to do the job has caused this. Is thereany way to get rid of it?

 

Well, there a distinction between partitions and HD. Partitions are labeled with drive letters in XP like C:, D: E: etc.. A HD can have more than one partition. Now, it sounds like you generally create one large partition for each HD. So you have 3 HDs but are seeing a fourth partition?

Easeus can do it also, but for simplicity sake check Disk management in XP to see the layout of your HDs.

Now look at the graphs in the bottom pane. Which HD contains the G: partition and what other partition is part of that drive?

 

Disc management shows C:, E: and H: as HDDs all with 1 partition, D: and F: are dvd/CD and G: does not appear anywhere , but it still show up in "My Computer" and "Explore". Device Manager shows the same drives as above.
I think that maybe G represents a theoretical drive/partition generated when I was trying to partition my SATA drive (Whuch is now H.

 

Hmmm,

Did you use anything like MagicISO or PowerISO or Daemon Tools while finding your partitioning software? Most times when you install an ISO program they create a virtual drive letter for mounting an ISO image.

Does drive G: in My Computer have a CD/DVD looking icon or a HD icon?

 

No, I didn't use any ISO related tools at all.
The "My Computer" icon is a HD icon as opposed to CD/DVD.
I suppose that if we can't resolve this problem, I can live with it since it doesn't DO anything just sits there like the spirit of Christmas past. Thanks for trying.

 

Is your H: drive close to the 500GB of its capacity?

In My Computer if you right-click the G: drive and select Format what does it show as the capacity/size?

 

Hi Sach2,

The H: Drive, the one which I low level formatted shows 500.096,991,232.
The mysterious G: Drive shows Zero used space and zero available space therefore zero capacity but the disc image is blued out as if it is full.