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General discussion

How to 'remove' bad block on hard drive

May 23, 2005 3:17AM PDT

In my event viewer, there are numerous entries for a 'bad block' on my hard drive. A friend of mine suggested that I do not need a new hard drive, but to merely mark that spot as unusable with some third-party software (Norton?). My question is two fold:
1.) Should I be concerned with the bad block to the point of buying a new drive?
2.) If #1 is not necessary, can I use a tool to make the bad block disappear/hidden? If so, what tool would be a good one to try?

Also, I have backed up all of my important data, so that part is taken care of.

I am running an AMD Athlon 2700+ with 1GB RAM and Maxtor 160GB hard drive on WinXP Pro (SP1).

Thanks for all your help in advance!

Discussion is locked

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At 160GB it's fairly new. Run Maxtor's drive test.
May 23, 2005 3:21AM PDT

You may get a report and a replacement drive.

However, if you connected said drive with a 40 conductor IDE cable, errors are common. Also, errors are common in overheated cases or stressed power supplies.

Bob

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RE: At 160GB it's fairly new. Run Maxtor's drive test.
May 23, 2005 3:27AM PDT

Thansk Bob. The drive is connected via IDE and my temp monitoring software has not alerted me of any problems, so I don't suspect that. The power supply shouldn't be suspect either. The only extra perifs are DVD-R (no FDD, 2nd CD, etc.)

I'll try the Maxtor software. Didn't think of that...