Bad Clusters

[AJC]

Wonder if anyone could shed some ligght on this please.

My other PC was running real slow so I performed a surface scan of the HD. It has shown up to now 150 'bad clusters' and it's only 6% through the scan.

What causes a bad cluster?

Once fixed can they ever be used again?

Will a new HD be on the cards?

Cheers

AJ

[DEANO3528]

Not a pc wizz but am under the impression that a bad cluster cannot be repaired. More than willing to be proved wrong though.
Take a look here (http://www.daniweb.com/techtalkforums/showthread.php?t=16367)

[AJC]

Cheers Deano. Very helpful.


AJ

[P00DLE]

a bad cluster is never going to be recoverable these may have been caused if your pc was recently moved or knocked but more than likely means your hard disk is poorly. While it may go on for years i would certainly consider backing up any important data you have stored on it just in case.

[chrisandlandie]

Failing hard drive....mine needs a full scandisk from dos every few months which gets things working right again....its been failing for several years now, so total failiure may not be iminent....but take 'back up' precautions

[NeilB]

Bad sectors are caused by surface imperfactions and your disk will have come with many from the factory....don't worry there are many spare sectors.
If your power has crashed recently then you may have a recoverable error. The scandisk will reallocate the data in the bad sectors to some of the spare sectors.
If you have not had a power problem but have not run scandisk for a long time then the disk could be fine - just needs a clean up.
If you have run scandisk regularly and not had a power problem then the trouble could be the disk starting to die.
Back up the data and see how it goes would be my advice - worth what you paid for it.

Neil

[AJC]

Cheers for the replies.

Last week I started a surface scan and after four days of fixing errors it wa only 10% complete!! Yes, it's that slow. Can't get the OS to load now I've resigned to the fact that a new disc is required.

There is nothing on the PC that I'll miss except my MS Money files. I did religously back up to floppy but when I tried to load them onto my laptop it was reported that that they were not 32 bit compatible or something like that. I thought that they would have been able to be used on any PC with the correct programme.

Any advice as to how I can recover my files from the floppies?

AJ

[Saratoga]

It depends on the contents of the floppy and what has been backed up.

It is often reccomended that if you feel the drive is on the way out then it is better to backup now than loose it. Never mind eh?! These Things Are Sent To Try Us.

My last "unrecoverable" PC failure was when the motherboard caught fire, after the chip had burnt its way through. That was a few years ago mind. It would have been OK but my brother used the fire extinguisher on it. A water one. It was still plugged in.

Never mind. Didn't take long to fix ALL the blown fuses for the entire house :( :o