Bad HDD, or Just Bad MBR

I have a dual-boot W2k sys., and 2-40 Gig HDD's where 1 part. has web access (labelled Main) , and the other has no web access, and very minim. resources for intense digital audio editing (Aud-Apps). Those are both on the same HDD, a West. Digital. Last week I began getting a S.M.A.R.T. msg saying "DISK BAD, Backup or Replace!" I thought I'd fixed the problem, then without any other warning Saturday, after Dskkeeper telling me it couldn't defrag "Main" because of 2 bad .dll's I shtdwn, rboot only to get the BSOD!

Trying to remain calm, because I have a lot of stuff backed up on other logic partitions for times like this, I rbooted to the Aud-Apps just to see what I could see. The Main drive only showed up as a "Local Disk ", while clicking on it said it wasn't formatted and would I like to try that. TWICE I tried an Unconditional Format (format /u), but after taking at least 1/2 hr. it said (I think) "Track 0 corrupted, or Bad Disk "! It's also affecting my other bootable drive somewhat, which is on the same phys. hdd, but if it's on an entirely different partition I'm not sure why it would be affecting it.

Good News is from the other bootable drive I've been able to backup all of my data to DVD+RW. My question is if there's any way I can erase/delete the old MBR and salvage this hdd? Is this a possible alt.? How 'bout converting that partition only to a logical partition so I can isolate it and make it inactive, thereby not affecting the rest of the system so much. Then change that phys. drive to the Primary, using my Seagate as the Prim. and installing the dual boot on that. Shouldn't this work? If not, pls advise.

Tanx Much,
gplea

 

First thing would be to find out if you have a drive that is really going bad. If so, it probably isn't worth much messing with and is useless unless you need a paper weight.

Look Here for some Western Digital utilities that should allow you to figure out where you stand and if the drive seems physically OK, to get it working again.

 

Hi gplea.

You can boot from a floppy with fdisk on it and type "fdisk /mbr" (no quotes) and it will redo the mbr.

Normal causes of this problem is circuit problems on the hdd, some dust floating around on the surface of the disks, or the heads have worn. For the first two, forget it and get another drive. For the worn heads, what happens is the mechanism that extends the heads gets worn and the heads no longer follow the tracks. They are a little left or right and don't read the data correctly. For this you can go to the manufacturer and get the programs to run a "low level format" and them do a normal format. If that is the cause it should fix it. Nothing to lose.

If writing a new mbr works, get all the data off that you can and try a low level format. Writing a new mbr is only a very minor repair and it will go bad again very shortly. Writing a new mbr is only a stop-gap measure.