Question regarding a bad block on a Hard Disk...

[kuzanagi]

Hi,

I have a Maxtor Diamondmax 160GB 7200rpm SATA HDD which I've owned now for about 18 months now, and it's developed a bad block (or a range of bad blocks, I'm unsure?). I know this because my PC started freezing up overnight, I usually leave it on 24/7, then for no obvious reason it started to lock up by the time I came to use it the next day. I then found out via the Event Log that it was locking up due to a bad block on my hard disk.

Now, I can proceed in several ways, and would like to have your opinions on the ways I've identified.

1.) Buy a new hard disk and send the defective one back to Maxtor for a replacement (assuming that bad blocks are covered under their warranty policy?)

2.) Keep the one I've got, and use the Max Blast utility to wipe the drive as well as the bad block (I'm told that this is possible). Reformat then reinstall my OS and so on.

No hard disk analysis software seems to work by the way, since ths bad block just crashed the system. I've tried Scandisk and Norton Disk Doctor, but both just lock up.

The main reason I'm asking is that I'm putting some serious thought to buying a 74gb Raptor and having my old disk drive as a secondary drive. That way, I get a faster main drive, and if my secondary drive goes to sh*t then I'm not going to lose an awful lot (I only really use a secondary drive for media and so on, so I could just keep backups on DVD).

Thanks,

Chris.

 

[ProcalX]

Before returning it to Maxtor I would backup any important data to another media device e.g: USB Pen Drive, CD-R, CD-RW, 2nd Hard Drive.

Then I would download "Kill Disk", this utility can be found in our Download Zone, run this and completely wipe the hard drive, for every time you have ever deleted / edited / added a partition using Windows, Windows will leave your old Partition Tables on your hard drive, which Kill Disk removes. :)

Kill Disk is a very good formatting utility as it removes EVERYTHING, then reinstall windows and leave for a good few nights to see if it's stable. If you do not get reports of a bad block send it back to maxtor.

However, as i am unsure as to the warranty policy of maxtors hard drives, i would read up, as i'm pretty sure a bad block can be the drive being faulty, although you stand a good chance of recovering your drive via formatting as it may only be Windows or a bad partition.

Hope this helps

-PX

 

[Big B]

Maxtor is pretty good about the RMA process. Unfortunately, you need to send it to them after you get the RMA #, so you'll be without a hard drive for a few weeks.