HDD errors with Chkdsk - what's the difference

When running chkdsk...what's the difference in the following three problems:
bad cluster
bad sector
bad block (surface scan)

Can any or all of these be "repaired" via Windows 7 Pro 64bit utilities ?

Also are there any issues/problems running say Seagate's dos iso untility on HDD's other than Seagate. Have a Hatachi Deskstar drive...will running Seagate's iso cd cause any issues with the Hatachi ( Hatachi apparently discontinured their own iso utility app according to their site)

Thanks...TR

See, the HDD hides things from the user. E.g. a 250 GB HDD has more space than that on it. At manufacture, it sets up internal tables that allocate 250 GB worth of good sectors to be used. Then it sets aside, hidden from you, more good sectors as a reserve. Over time, as the disk gets used it constantly checks its own operations in the background. When a sector is becoming unreliable, the data on it is copied to a spare good sector which is then marked as a good sector in use. The bad sector is marked as bad so it won't be used again. In fact, this is one of the functions of SMART technology- when the pool of spare good sectors approaches the lower limit, it puts out a warning about the drive dying.

AFAIK, the hdd vendor utility updates this info in the HDD's internal memory. Then it marks the bad sectors as unavailable and replaces them with good ones from the spare pool, to you it looks like the bad sectors are gone.

The long and short is you can't "repair" a bad sector. Some low-level utilities (like Spinrite), however, probably do a better job of testing sectors and deciding whether they are totally unusable or can be moved back to the "good spare" category.

2) Check these pages.

http://www.tacktech.com/display.cfm?ttid=287#hitachi

http://www.grc.com/spinrite.htm

3) Having said all of the above, there are certain apps like HDD regenerator which claims to regenerate bad sectors by magnetic reversal. This technology is supposed to be hardware independent. I have no idea whether this actually works.

http://www.gold-software.com/download7605.html

Attached is my check disk log for my new main C: drive cloned from my old HDD drive.

Win 7 Pro 64bit Chkdsk /f command from system startup scan reports loOK ok to me...but here is one section that I am concerned with:

CHKDSK is verifying security descriptors (stage 3 of 5)...
532736 file SDs/SIDs processed.
Cleaning up 4 unused index entries from index $SII of file 0x9.
Cleaning up 4 unused index entries from index $SDH of file 0x9.
Cleaning up 4 unused security descriptors.

What is the "Cleaning up" issue about ?

Anything else that looks to be of concern I would appreciate your input...

Thanks...TR

richc46 said:

Welcome

The chkdsk, corrects any small problems
Everything loOKs OK. Run the SFC below. If that is good, just enjoy the great OS.

SFC /SCANNOW Command - System File Checker[2]=Performance Maintenance

Thanks...progress but maybe an issue

SFC /scannow is for the most part clean but one issue does show up. (log attached)

I do not use this in Win 7...and since this is a clone it probably came over from the old drive a couple days ago

Here is the only error I can find in the scan:

2010-06-19 09:33:50, Info CSI 000008c4 [SR] Cannot verify component files for Microsoft-Windows-Speech-UserExperience-Common, Version = 6.1.7600.16385, pA = PROCESSOR_ARCHITECTURE_INTEL (0), Culture neutral, VersionScope = 1 nonSxS, PublicKeyToken = {l:8 b:31bf3856ad364e35}, Type neutral, TypeName neutral, PublicKey neutral, manifest is damaged (TRUE)

It's repeated though four times in the log...but the only difference in each entry is the highlighted in red text above ?

Since I do not have a restore point to go by in this new clone...should/can I just ignore this error without concern for my over all system performance/integrity ?

Thanks much...TR