How to check if bad sectors has affected windows installation?

[nevesswodniw]

Hi,

I have installed windows 7 x64, the installation went fine, it runs fine, no bsods, no crashes, no restarts, no freezes, no slowdown. Basically it just runs fine, all updates installed fine.

Now, I did a scan on the HDD, and it has bad sectors pending. I imaged the windows to another HDD.

Loaded onto the other HDD, it boots fine, runs fine, idles fine, installed a few things, checked the files system, ran chkdsk ( just fix box, not the second box to repair ), all OK.


So my question is, how can I know if the bad sectors on old HDD had any damage to the windows installation, and thus on the new HDD?

If the bad sectors caused data loss or corruption, before I imaged it on the old HDD, how would it show up on the new HDD. Should I being seeing any bsods, freezing, slowness? Any software to test to make sure it has not been affected in any way?


Thank you!

 

[Sardonicus]

I suspect that if Windows 7 is installed on the part of the drive where there are no bad sectors, you should be OK.
But as programs are installed, the bad sectors may create problems.
I don't think there's any way of knowing if there are any problems within your current programs until they occur.

Drive manufacturers have programs that diagnose and possibly repair bad sectors.

 

[TVeblen]

I would run ChkDsk to test the drive in windows.
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/433-disk-check.html

Then I would run System File Checker to see if there are any corrupted system files.
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/1538-sfc-scannow-command-system-file-checker.html

Then I would run the hard drive manufacturer's diagnostic utility to see if I could correct/repair any bad sectors as Sardonicus has suggested.

 

[Qdos]

Is SMART active in your BIOS?

 

[Fred Garvin]

So my question is, how can I know if the bad sectors on old HDD had any damage to the windows installation, and thus on the new HDD?

If you have an idea where the bad sector was, you can use Diskview from Sysinternals to find the files that occupied that cluster. You may be able to run something like Hard Drive Tune on the bad drive and find the bad blocks, then use Diskview to see what was in that location. It's an awesome standalone program.

 

[nevesswodniw]

I'm not installing anything on the old HDD with bad sectors.

The old hdd at the time of imaging windows, had 30 current pending sectors, and 0 reallocated sectors.

I then restored the image onto the new hdd.

The new hdd has no bad sectors.

Windows on the old hdd, passed all file system checks, and also showed no signs of any problems or data loss/corruption ( installed every windows update since sp1 and other updates etc... completed fine ).

restored windows image on the new hdd, runs normal, passed all file system checks.
Although I have not run sfc /scannow.

So really I'm just worried if there's any impact of the bad sectors on the image, which is restored on the new hdd, because it's running perfectly, but I don't want errors to start coming up later on.

Thats basically why I just wanted to know if running all the windows scans/check etc means the OS is fine, or whether it's impossible to find out if there's any hidden impact from the bad sectors.

My only other option, would be to install windows fresh again on the new hdd.


I downloaded diskview, but how do I know how to match up the info in that program to where the bad sectors are on the old hdd?
For example, from the scan on the old hdd, it shows in the log:

Error : LBA 55929295
Error : LBA 65801956
Error : LBA 73184815

How do I find where those are on the old hdd, and whether they are on the OS partition?




Thanks again.


http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/1538-sfc-scannow-command-system-file-checker.html

 

[Dwarf]

Due to manufacturing tolerances and the nature of the technology involved (a physical disk), there will inevitably be sectors that do not function as they should. The HDD firmware (its embedded software) knows this, and these bad sectors are automatically taken out of use and remapped to one of the spare sectors that are specifically provided for this purpose (these sectors do not count towards the nominal capacity of the drive, since they are only called upon for this purpose).

It should be pointed out that even on brand new drives of the highest quality will have some bad sectors, and that whilst drives can be upwards of 99.999% bad sector free, they can never be 100%. And that includes the HDDs user by many of the world's biggest servers, such as those used by Google and Microsoft themselves.

As regards the LBA errors, I think that these are just sector reference locations for where a sector has failed and has been marked bad.

 

[nevesswodniw]

OK, after scanning the whole old hdd, there are 928 pending sectors ( smart was only showing 30 after I imaged the windows partition ) , 0 reallocated.

Now, because they have not been reallocated, what does this mean?

That they have not been written to, or that they have been written to, then became bad, and have not been written to since then. Which then means, that if the bad sectors are only being read ( and remaining pending ) would this not show up as errors in windows that I have restored onto the new hdd?

So how would I find if those exact bad pending sectors have data in them, in the image I made and restored on the new hdd?

BTW, I just ran sfc /verifyonly on the new hdd, and windows has no errors.

 

[Comp Cmndo]

Use the manufacturer's diagnostic software to remap the bad sectors.
Hard Drive Diagnostics Tools and Utilities (Storage) - TACKtech Corp.

 

[TVeblen]

So really I'm just worried if there's any impact of the bad sectors on the image, which is restored on the new hdd, because it's running perfectly, but I don't want errors to start coming up later on.

You are looking for a confirmation that no one here can give.

If you run SFC and it shows no Windows System Files are missing or corrupted then you can be reasonably assured that the new image and OS are fine.

If you can not be satisfied by the results of the System File check and your own observations, then you know what you want to do.
I wouldn't bother.

 

[nevesswodniw]

So really I'm just worried if there's any impact of the bad sectors on the image, which is restored on the new hdd, because it's running perfectly, but I don't want errors to start coming up later on.

You are looking for a confirmation that no one here can give.

If you run SFC and it shows no Windows System Files are missing or corrupted then you can be reasonably assured that the new image and OS are fine.

If you can not be satisfied by the results of the System File check and your own observations, then you know what you want to do.
I wouldn't bother.

I think I'm just not explaining myself properly in my posts

I'm just after info on whether all the scans I've run on the new hdd indicate that it is indeed error free, which in turn would mean that the bad sectors on the old hdd didn't impact the OS negatively when imaged.

I was assuming that there were scans and software that would tell me that the OS is definitely running 100% fine. Thats all really.

Now, if running chkdsk /f /r and SFC, and file system checkers means that everything is fine, then thats all I wanted know

I bolded the bit in your post, that I was after

On the other hand, if you said, all the scans in the world wont tell you the OS is fine, then that's fine too, just means I'll have to reinstall windows.



BTW, I checked the old HDD and found out that all sectors between 55000000 and 76000000 are occupied by hiberfil and pagefile.
All the LBA errors are between 55000000 and 76000000. Assuming defrag cant move hiberfil and pagefile around, I'm guessing that the bad sectors were only used by them, which is maybe why my image is running fine

 

[TVeblen]

If you ran System File Checker, and the scan came out clean then you are fine.


IMHO

 

[GeneO]

sfc /verifyonly

Is about the only thing available for your stated purpose

 

[Kaktussoft]

XCOPY O:\*.* N:\tempfolder /D/E/H/V/C/K/Y

Where O is olddrive and N is newdriveletter
First do DIR C: DIR D: etc to determine driveletters
any errors, if so what files? Delete tempfolder afterwards

Do these action from within "recovery environment" -> command prompt. So you've got all privileges

 

[Kaktussoft]

BTW, I checked the old HDD and found out that all sectors between 55000000 and 76000000 are occupied by hiberfil and pagefile.
All the LBA errors are between 55000000 and 76000000. Assuming defrag cant move hiberfil and pagefile around, I'm guessing that the bad sectors were only used by them, which is maybe why my image is running fine

lucky you! Can you delete hiberfile and pagefile on old drive as they aren't needed anymore! Better wipeout the space the files did occupy. Eraser for example
This forces a write to the blocks. any bad blocks afterwards?

 

[Fred Garvin]

As TVeblen said, there's no way to tell from here. You are asking about file integrity but doing physical structure scans. SFC is the only thing that will come close to verifying individual system files are in tact and not damaged.

I wasn't suggesting you install anything on the old hard drive. You'd install HDTune on the new system & Diskview requires no installation. Then slave your old drive to read it. Diskview is the only method I know of (I'm sure there are others) to find the exact physical location of a file on your hard drive.

 

[Kaktussoft]

As TVeblen said, there's no way to tell from here. You are asking about file integrity but doing physical structure scans. SFC is the only thing that will come close to verifying individual system files are in tact and not damaged.

I wasn't suggesting you install anything on the old hard drive. You'd install HDTune on the new system & Diskview requires no installation. Then slave your old drive to read it. Diskview is the only method I know of (I'm sure there are others) to find the exact physical location of a file on your hard drive.

He already knows the bad blocks are ONLY in pagefile and hiberfile. Simply erase the files by wiping them with 0 values or random values, so force the disk to do a write to the bad blocks. SMART cannot write to the blocks and does an automatic replacement. Those bad blocks will NEVER be reused! Check afterwards if it has done the task. So you know SMART is working

Or simply leave it the way it is. Blocks in pagefile and hiberfile are never accessed (because he has booted many times afterwards). The blocks are only read after written by new contents (write doesn't work so SMART replaces the blocks)

Only problem for now:

• maybe disk is realy dying(?)
• maybe SMART isn't working(?)