Hard Drive Explanation

[Carl Price]

Hi all. I replaced a harddrive for a customer this week and just for fun and education, I reformatted in with the /q option. It showed something like 32 meg of bad sectors when finished. I reformatted again with the same /q option and bad sectors increased. In all I reformatted the drive 5 times and got an increase in bad sectors each time. I know enough to know that this drive is toast.

What I would really like is for someone who knows what goes on inside one of these puppies to explain the multiplication of bad sectors. What goes on inside the drives to increase bad sectors from format to format? I know there is nothing you can do for the drive but I would really like to know what is going on.

[TwoRails]

Did the BIOS correctly recognize the drive?

Did you try the /c switch?

[glc]

From how I understand it - there can be different reasons for this, all fatal. The magnetic material can be flawed and deteriorating (either physical or electronic), there may have been a head crash which has physically struck the platter and put flakes on the head, which gouge the rest of the disk as the heads operate.

[Carl Price]

Originally posted by TwoRails Did the BIOS correctly recognize the drive? Did you try the /c switch?

I really don't understand what the above has to do with the question at hand. I'm not trying to save the drive, I just want to know what is going on with it. Thanks for your attention, tho.

[TwoRails]

Originally posted by Carl Price I really don't understand what the above has to do with the question at hand. I'm not trying to save the drive, I just want to know what is going on with it. Thanks for your attention, tho.

The problem can be caused by, I imagine, many things. One is, as glc mentioned, a drive going bad. I've been lucky and had only a few drives actually go bad on my personal systems. Another option, the one I'm leaning to, is the drive is not properly recognized somewhere down the line. This is what has happened to me more than drive failure. In this situation, I've corrected whatever the problem was with the drive recognition and reformated. This yielded a drive with no errors.....