recovery of bad clusters - any log?

[Anderson2]

I believe one of my external hd has developed some bad clusters and they do appear on a surface scan. So I ran Windows 7's "automatically fix file system errors" and "Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors".

Is there a way to find out what bad clusters Windows found and recovered without doing another lengthy surface scan? Is there a log somewhere of what it found?

Is there a better tool to remove these bad clusters than using Windows' tool above?

Thanks.

 

[zigzag3143]

I believe one of my external hd has developed some bad clusters and they do appear on a surface scan. So I ran Windows 7's "automatically fix file system errors" and "Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors".

Is there a way to find out what bad clusters Windows found and recovered without doing another lengthy surface scan? Is there a log somewhere of what it found?

Is there a better tool to remove these bad clusters than using Windows' tool above?

Thanks.

No there is no log for the bad sectors as they are ever changing, and no there is not tool to remove them. All that is needed is that they are marked as bad and so not used for data. Most HD have between 5 and 10% bad sectors.

Even if there were a log of bad sectors there isnt much that could be done about them.

Ken

 

[fishnbanjo]

Your hard drive is physically much larger than the size your BIOS and OS report it as being which is how bad sectors are dealt with, as far as I know there are no tools for you to identify what sectors were identified and marked as bad since new good sectors were mapped into your drives physical foot print.

 

[Anderson2]

Thank you both. Does Windows "format" reliably remove the bad clusters?

 

[Tepid]

No, Bad Sectors can not be fixed, found, removed, or anything.
Bad Sectors are marked as bad and forgotten.

S.m.a.r.t. - I think sort of keeps track of them, and will give you a warning when it is time to replace the hard drive due to an abundance of bad sectors, but they can not be determined or fix.

There is a hard drive function of all drives called Secure Wipe that will wipe any data on bad sectors, but this does not mark them as not bad. They can not be recovered by any means.

HDDErase is the tool used and more info is Here and Here and Here

 

[fishnbanjo]

Thank you both. Does Windows "format" reliably remove the bad clusters?

Tepid has it right, the drive will mark a bad sector as being bad then readdress the drive to the original size by adding sectors at the end.

 

[Anderson2]

Thank you all. Turns out the drive was under warranty and because it failed Seagate's Seatools self test, they will replace it.

 

[Tepid]

Yep, Seagate has a great 5 year warranty and they are very good about replacing drives.
And most of their drives are good quality.