Files occupying bad sectors in HDD

[me5354]

One of my Older HDD has started to develop bad sectors, Is there any programs that will allow me to LOCK out that part of the HDD? ie: Locking out the blocks and sectors of where that file resides.

Windows~

[GoNz0]

open the cmd window and type

chkdsk <drive letter>: /r

say

chkdsk f: /r


it will check and recover files in bad sectors and flag them, next time you do a full format on that drive they will be flagged and the file size made up from one of the spare sectors on the end of the platter. its an automatic process during file checks and formats.

[me5354]

open the cmd window and type...

Thanks for your reply ^^, Unfortunately chkdsk sees the drive as "Healthy" although if the file in itself is accessed it would cause the drive to go in a delayed write error and causes the drive to spas out (ie: unable to do anything with that HDD untill I reboot).

Still looking for a program to isolate that file from the HDD partition~

[da_ging]

why not just run the manufacturers diagnostic program , that should do what you want assuming there are indeed bad sectors

[me5354]

why not just run the manufacturers diagnostic program , that should do what you want assuming there are indeed bad sectors

Thanks for your suggestion, The drive in question is a Samung P160 drive, I have already ran the HUTIL program, diagnostics comes up with "Unknown error" and I have already done a low-level format on the drive.

The drive is having mechanic difficulties with just a few certain blocks.

[peterb]

Can you acess the SMART reporting? Modern drives rarely have bad sectors visible to the OS - the drive controller maps them out and re-allocates good sectors from the bank of 'spares'. Only when all those spares are used up will you start seeing bad sectors externally. I suspect the drive is getting past its shelf life. (You said it was an older drive - how old?) (Incidentally, there is no such thing as a low level format on a modern drive - the low level format is done at mfr by the mfr - there is no mechanism for the end user to do that - whatever the user OS or bios may say - without very specialised software and access to the disk's internal OS)

[me5354]

Can you access the SMART reporting? Modern drives rarely have bad sectors visible to the OS - the drive controller...

Thanks for your suggestion; The drive is 3 years old, I cannot access SMART reporting (since my Motherboard has problems recognizing the drive's SMART, I have an Asus-SK8V)

The drive itself can be used normally unless that certain file is accessed, the Low level format I mentioned before was done using the HUTIL from Samsung.

HDTune shows the file with bad sectors (and the drive is unusable for that session when that sector is accessed.)

chkdsk <drive> /r will stall on 84% now.

I believe the Hard drive is past its shelf life since I have been doing intensive encoding and decoding with that drive nearly everyday.

However I would be grateful if I can just isolate the file completely from the partition, currently I am just leaving the file alone and not touching it, the drive seems to run fine as long as I don't touch the file.

[peterb]

If the Samsunf utils can't help I'm not sure what you can do, apart from copy everything off the disk apart from that file, then use something like Winhex to dissect the useable sectors of that file out at the binary level. Pretty complex to do I'm afraid. Modern disk drives are quite complex and the internal layout is hidden behind the controller.

I'm surprised you can't see the SMART information as that is part of the ATA standard - unless it is the controller chip on the mobo that won't send those commands.

I think you are probably going to have to write that file off and get a replacement drive - and soon because if it has used all the spare sectors, it is going to start throwing more unrecoverable errors.

[me5354]

Yes that really does sound more complicated than just leaving the file alone, I guess its just time to back up all my data and say good bye then :< Thanks everyone for your help ^^

[peterb]

Samsung offered a 3 year warranty on the P160 drives - you might just be within that limit. RMA info is here (basically telling you to get in touch with the retailer you bought it from)

SAMSUNG Hard Disk Drive - support - warranty

That said, given that the replacement will be refurbished (not that there is anything wrong with that) and newer drives with larger capacities are really cheap as chips, it may not be worth the hassle.

[me5354]

Samsung offered a 3 year warranty on the P160 drives - you might just be within that limit. RMA info is here (basically telling you to get in touch with the retailer you bought it ....

Yeh I thought of RMA as an option too, but the process of RMA to the manufacturer takes around 3 weeks to 3 months (lol) a new drive only costs around £30~

But thanks anyway ^^ everyone's giving me alot of ideas on this issue

[herulach]

try cdcheck CDCheck - CD checking and recovery software
If you know what dir the file is in it should be able to fix it, takes a long while though.

[peterb]

It might be worth a try (its freeware) but I think the damage is at a lower level than this tool will operate at.