[Resolved] Hard Drive Failed

**JohnB** · 25th June 2009

Just had my slave hard ("E") drive fail or start to fail. In the event veiwer I get this message:

Event Type: Error
Event Source: Disk
Event Category: None
Event ID: 7
Date: 6/24/2009
Time: 4:57:26 PM
User: N/A
Computer: GORDSTOY
Description:
The device, \Device\Harddisk1\D, has a bad block

and from the MS help site:

ID: 7
Source: Disk
Version: 5.2
Symbolice Name: IO_ERR_BAD_BLOCK
Message: The device, %1, has a bad block.

Fortunately this is my E: "backup" hard drive so OS and all original programs and data on C: drive is still OK.

I have tried formatting the E drive but it only gets to 45% then stops. A quick format will work but obviously does not get rid of the bad block.

My question is: Is there any chance of repairing this drive and how would I go about it?

**Christer** · 25th June 2009

I would search the manufacturers site for disk management tools. After running the appropriate tool, if the problem seems to be fixed, I would delete and recreate the partition and do a normal format.

**PeteC** · 25th June 2009

Disk Diagnostic Software ....

ExcelStore

Hitachi/IBM

Samsung

Seagate, Maxtor, Quantum

Western Digital

**mattman** · 25th June 2009

Run Error Checking (CHKDSK) on the drive. Get it to scan the surface for bad sectors (CHKDSK E: /r). It may take a long time, so set it to run overnight.

That will mark the sectors as bad, but it does not "fix" the drive. The surrounding disk media will keep breaking down and further bad sectors will appear. A drive I still have had bad sectors from a power blackout. I found a program that shows sectors marked as bad (you could see them in the Windows 98 version of Defragmentation) and I was able to format drives on either side of the damaged sectors and leave that section as free space (actually, I made a small drive on the damaged section, then deleted that drive). The damage was sustained around ten years ago. It works fine.

Matt

**JohnB** · 25th June 2009

Thanks all for your suggestions, I will try some of them when I get time.

**JohnB** · 26th June 2009

Well, I tried all of the suggestions in the previous posts, including mattman's suggestion of isolating the bad sectors. Chkdsk would not complete, got to 42% and stopped, Seagates Diag. software came up with fails. A small app. called "HD Tune" that identified the location of bad blocks showed that from 17500MB to 20000MB was bad and from 32000MB to 39000MB was also bad, a total of 25% of the drive.

End result, the drive is now in the trash can and I will be looking to purchase a new one as soon as the the bank account allows.

In the meantime I think I will back up my data files on CD

Thanks for all your suggestions.

**PeteC** · 26th June 2009

Thanks for the update - these things happen