I have a 200GB WD that is divided into 5 partitions. One of them has 4kb in
bad clusters according to CHKDSK. Is it worth trying to run SpinRite or HDD
Regenerator to fix this? Does that mean the other partitions are OK?.....
A little advice here would be appreciated. The WD Diag utitlily gave it a
SMART fail in the Raw Read Write category.

"02befree" <nottoman@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:vMmdnZ400vk4XqrYnZ2dnUVZ_u6dnZ2d@comcast.com. ..
A few bad clusters are not always something to worry about...
and it's not worth it trying to recover them...

****however**** the SMART fail means that you need to backup and *replace*
the drive ASAP...

if it's still under warranty get an RMA

02befree wrote:

It is ALWAYS worth running Spinrite. The "bad clusters" may not
be bad at all, but merely no longer directly in the path of the
r/w heads. Spinrite will fix that. That's why you paid the big
money for the program.

"02befree" <nottoman@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:vMmdnZ400vk4XqrYnZ2dnUVZ_u6dnZ2d@comcast.com. ..
Compare the value of your data with the cost of a new HD....kind of a
no-brainer about getting a new one, huh?

Doug

"02befree" <nottoman@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:vMmdnZ400vk4XqrYnZ2dnUVZ_u6dnZ2d@comcast.com. ..
Most modern HDs electronically re-map any bad sectors so you never actually
see them, if there has become more than the drive can disguise its time to
start thinking about a new drive.

OTOH some types of virus conceal the body of their code in fake (falsely
marked as bad) bad sectors. Rare these days, but can't say it never happens!

In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage 02befree <nottoman@hotmail.com> wrote:
4kB is one cluster exactly. But the fialed SMART means the disk is dying.
You migh get it to work for a few days or even weeks, but it will die.

Arno

In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage SgtMinor <Sarge@the.old.folks.home.invalid> wrote:
With todays ECC on disks, SpinRite is essentially worthless.
It was different a long time ago.

Arno

In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage ian field <dai.ode@ntlworld.com> wrote:

Rare, because modern virusses are too large for that. And they cannot
cause a bad SMART status.

Arno

SgtMinor <Sarge@the.old.folks.home.invalid> wrote
Nope.

Not even possible with servo drives.

Nope.

Nope, he got scammed. So did you.

Arno Wagner wrote:
If your lost data is worthless you should not worry about
retrieving it.

Rod Speed wrote:

Wrong. The OP asked about using it which implied he had a copy.
In that case it's ALWAYS worth using as it does no harm.

You don't know what you're talking about.

I speak from experience.

Having recovered data from several bad disks, and having removed
so-called "bad sectors" from others, I don't feel scammed in the
least. I have owned and used various versions of SpinRite for
over 15 years and I don't know of anything that can revive hard
drives the way it can.

In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage SgtMinor <Sarge@the.old.folks.home.invalid> wrote:
My data is not worthless, but what SpinRite does is. I can run a
long SMART self-test with much the same result, but without the
cost.

Arno

In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage SgtMinor <Sarge@the.old.folks.home.invalid> wrote:
Depends. It causes disk-load. And it costs time. It may also
give false hope....

Arno

SgtMinor wrote:

Can you explain what you mean about not being in the path of the r/w heads?

"SgtMinor" <Sarge@the.old.folks.home.invalid> wrote in message news:f9GdnegwOqIPS6XYnZ2dnUVZ_uydnZ2d@comcast.com
Rotflol.
That is a rather colourful way of saying that the OS won't use them anymore.

No it won't. (it may fix the filesystem though).

Utterly clueless.

Too bad it hasn't got anything to do with ECC, babblebot.

No it's not, although the previous version was rather useless on SCSI.

When it had a different function.

"SgtMinor" <Sarge@the.old.folks.home.invalid> wrote in message news:i7idndpHZ4cbSqXYnZ2dnUVZ_oKdnZ2d@comcast.com
Nonsense, you should never use it on a drive that has only hours to live.
You will kill it almost instantly.

Sure, but you do, right.

Bwahaha.

There actually is another obscure program that claims to do the same, the
one mentioned above.

In article <4538f1c5$0$97238$892e7fe2@authen.yellow.readfreen ews.net>,
Folkert Rienstra <folkertdotrienstra@freeler.nl> wrote:

What does spinrite claim to do?
--
a d y k e s @ p a n i x . c o m
Harrison for Congress in NY 13CD www.harrison06.com
Don't blame me. I voted for Gore. A Proud signature since 2001

craigm wrote:

Steve Gibson, the creator of Spinrite, explains that over time the
heads can drift from the position they had when the data was first
written to the sector. As a result the now mis-aligned heads can
no longer access that data and thus the sector may be marked as
"bad." The DynaStat component of SpinRite jolts the heads across
the platter in an attempt to locate those heads back over the
place the data was written. It then reads that data and rewrites
it. Here's how it's explained in the SpinRite documentation:

"During this exhaustive rereading, DynaStat employs its second
recovery strategy of deliberately wiggling the drive's heads. By
successively approaching the troubled sector from different
distances and directions, the heads arrive at the sector's track
at different velocities, which in turn produce small but
significant displacements in the head's resting position. This
allows DynaStat to compensate for the long-term alignment drift
that occurs in non-servo based drives, and the positioner
hysterysis that occurs in servo-based designs.
Thus the drive's heads are given every opportunity to land in the
best possible location to correctly read the sector. This approach
is also extremely effective at recovering data from misaligned
diskettes – which SpinRite 3.1 is proving to be extremely
effective upon."

You can hear the clattering sounds from the hard drive when
SpinRite does its thing. It's a great program and I highly
recommend it to people who are trying to extract valuable data
from "bad" sectors.

See "SpinRite's Technology" on this page:
http://www.grc.com/srdocs.htm

Al Dykes wrote:

A four-page brochure explains it all:
http://www.grc.com/files/sr5_lit.pdf

Folkert Rienstra wrote:
That's an excellent point. SpinRite should only be used on drives
with at least two days' worth of life left in them.