bad sectors on hard disks - will the drive be ok?

[target]

Can these just happen because that part of the disk is over used and the rest of the disk will be OK? Or is the disk on it's way out?
The sectors were in the hibernate file so they're probably written to twice a day as the PC shuts down.

I'm slightly concerned because the drives an IBM deathstar in a striped RAID array...

[tawsi]

If its a 75/60 GXP series I'd start looking to back up now.

Is it making the scratching noise? Once my 75GXP started to go it got worse quickly.

[Violator]

Not good, specially for IBM drives. Back up now 'cos if that drive fails, the stripe set is broken and bye bye data.

[sirp]

you might be lucky, i was/am...my ibm made that lovely scratching noise about 3 years ago..and i though it was dead..but its not done it now for best part of 3 years! it longer reports bad sectors too on a reformat!

[target]

There's no abnormal noises, except when it tries to read a bad sector. Can anyone recommend any software to stress test the surface? Like memtest but for hard disks?

[DeadKenny]

Originally posted by target
There's no abnormal noises, except when it tries to read a bad sector. Can anyone recommend any software to stress test the surface? Like memtest but for hard disks?

scandisk in full surface scan mode. It can also mark those sectors as bad and eliminate them from being used in the future.

[Katt]

Originally posted by DeadKenny
scandisk in full surface scan mode. It can also mark those sectors as bad and eliminate them from being used in the future.

i done this on my old hard drive before, but it kept creating more bad sectors as it tried to write to blocks which were adjacent to them. in the end, i partitioned around the bad sectors leaving them well alone! :D

[OliverScott]

Originally posted by target
There's no abnormal noises, except when it tries to read a bad sector. Can anyone recommend any software to stress test the surface? Like memtest but for hard disks?

Spinrite 5

[target]

I've done scandisk but it just does read checks. I was after something more like spinrite (as mentioned above) which does complex bit pattern writes to the disk so I can determine weak areas rather than just failed areas. The trouble is, spinrite does not work with raid controllers or partitions greater than 70gb. I need something a bit more modern.

[DeadKenny]

Do IBM have any diagnostic tools you can download? (i.e. like Maxtor's Powermax, or maybe you could use that).

RAID is a lot more tricky though as often the tools can't recognise or don't support the RAID controller especially if it's a DOS based tool (which is usually required to get low level enough without Windows causing problems). You may have to move the disc onto a standard IDE controller.

Perhaps the manufacturer of the RAID controller has some tools too?

[target]

I did download the ibm one. It says it supports my raid controller and did recognise the seperate drives. But it hung during the test and didn't look as comprehensive as spinrite. Estimating half an hour to finish rather than several. I'll give it another go tonight though.

I can't get much help with the card as the chipset was made by highpoint and the card was made by chaintech. Chaintech haven't supported it in years and none of the newer software/bios's from highpoint even recognise the card as one of theirs :(

This is a shame because without a new bios i can't fit hard disk >137gb which makes replacing the drives, if neccassary, a pain. It's not even clear whetehr that limit is per disk or combined tottal for the array. I'd like 2 80gb 72k50's if i need to replace the drives but i'm not sure it'd work. Highpoint 370 running bios v2 if anyone knows...

[DeadKenny]

Ouch, Highpoint! :gag:.

Pile of crud, at least the built in one on the KT7-RAID boards is (and it's the 370 controller). I abandoned using it as it was so unstable, whether you use it for RAID or just extra IDE (and all the Abit KT boards suggest replacing the Highpoint with an external card not using the Highpoint chipset. I think 'Promise' was one of the suggested replacements). Apparently it's good at corrupting discs and breaking RAID stripes too ;)

Oh, and I'm sure I read something about Highpoint and hibernation files, though with XP I thought there was a patch for it, but I do recall it never seemed to work. Works perfectly with the standard IDE interface though.

[target]

Originally posted by DeadKenny
breaking RAID stripes too ;)


Done that 3 times so far! I might just give up on raid and use the onboard controller. I have a feeling it's the raid card that's holding back my FSB overlocking anyway. I'd have to lose a couple of drives though.

The only problem I know with hibernation is a bug in the latest few versions of alcohol which make it look like your scsi disk (ie your raid array) is at fault when it's actually innocent.

[DeadKenny]

Here's one from the Abit KT7-FAQ (as this board uses the same Highpoint controller)...

"The Highpoint controller does not support disk shutdown in hibernate mode with Highpoint driver versions prior to version 1.11.0512."


There's also this from Microsoft on Hibernation corruption...

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;331958

Not specific to RAID but related to > 137GB discs (which might be possible with RAID if Windows sees the array as one disc).


Apparently it doesn't resume from Hibernation in Wink2 with Highpoint controllers (I seem to recall this problem when I had Win2k).

[target]

Ah excellent, thanks, I'll remember that hotfix if i replace the drives. I use hibernate all the time.

[target]

Finally getting it sorted! Still not got around to buying a new HD... but someone has released a 3rd party flash utility for my raid controller and Spinrite 6 is out which supports bigger drives and raid controllers. Also noticed my defrag software keeps moving the most frequently written file (pagefile) to the centre of the disc which is the worn out bit! So I'm gonna have to untick the defrag pagefile optoin!

[Faythur]

IMO bad sectors = bad news :oh-hum:

If it was me, I would get rid of ASAP [after a backup]

At the end of the day, hard drives really are 'dirt' cheap nowadays with a gigabyte of storage costing as low as around 40p on some models! :eek:

[target]

Yeah but I'm hanging on to see if the hitachi 7k400 has the meow sound when it's released.