Bad Clusters vs. Bad Sectors

[Ant]

Hello!

Am I understanding correctly that these terms are basically the same? If
so, then why did my client's updated Windows 2000 SP4's chkdsk (/r /f
parameters and rebooted to run it) on a HDD (NTFS) in an old Dell
Optiplex system say there was a bad cluster and was able to move a file
to a better place, but I rerun chkdsk in Windows 2000 and ran a chkdsk
(no parameters) and it found 0 KB of bad sector?

Thank you in advance.

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Ant is currently not listening to any songs on his home computer.

 

[BillW50]

In news:eCUe3AURKHA.4580@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl,
Ant typed on Sun, 04 Oct 2009 15:15:43 -0700:
> Hello!
>
> Am I understanding correctly that these terms are basically the same?
> If so, then why did my client's updated Windows 2000 SP4's chkdsk (/r
> /f parameters and rebooted to run it) on a HDD (NTFS) in an old Dell
> Optiplex system say there was a bad cluster and was able to move a
> file to a better place, but I rerun chkdsk in Windows 2000 and ran a
> chkdsk (no parameters) and it found 0 KB of bad sector?
>
> Thank you in advance.

Once a bad sector/cluster is found and marked as bad, it is no longer
part of the useable part of the drive. And IDE drives internally hides
them from outside sources, like Windows for example. Older MFM drives
didn't have this ability. And brand new hard drives always have had bad
sectors.

And manufactures got tired of people returning hard drives because they
have some bad sectors on them. So under IDE, they now had the ability to
hide them from the outside. Although they can only hide so many. Once
this limit is hit, they will start to show up. Which is rare, unless
something is wrong with the drive.

--
Bill
Asus EEE PC 702G8 ~ 2GB RAM ~ 16GB-SDHC
Windows XP SP2

 

[loke]

On Oct 7, 4:22 pm, "BillW50" wrote:
> Innews:eCUe3AURKHA.4580@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl,
> Ant typed on Sun, 04 Oct 2009 15:15:43 -0700:
>
> > Hello!
>
> > Am I understanding correctly that these terms are basically the same?
> > If so, then why did my client's updated Windows 2000 SP4's chkdsk (/r
> > /f parameters and rebooted to run it) on a HDD (NTFS) in an old Dell
> > Optiplex system say there was a bad cluster and was able to move a
> > file to a better place, but I rerun chkdsk in Windows 2000 and ran a
> > chkdsk (no parameters) and it found 0 KB of bad sector?
>
> > Thank you in advance.

>
> Once a bad sector/cluster is found and marked as bad, it is no longer
> part of the useable part of the drive. And IDE drives internally hides
> them from outside sources, like Windows for example. Older MFM drives
> didn't have this ability. And brand new hard drives always have had bad
> sectors.
>
> And manufactures got tired of people returning hard drives because they
> have some bad sectors on them. So under IDE, they now had the ability to
> hide them from the outside. Although they can only hide so many. Once
> this limit is hit, they will start to show up. Which is rare, unless
> something is wrong with the drive.
>
> --
> Bill
> Asus EEE PC 702G8 ~ 2GB RAM ~ 16GB-SDHC
> Windows XP SP2

But if you use SMART, a drive status system built in the modern
drives, you will know the bad sector problems, regardless, which
should give you a good info about the health of the drive as well.
Smartmontools on Linux does this very well.
Loke

 

[BillW50]

In
news:ad229aaf-2b35-4db4-ad4f-f94849a1ad2d@b18g2000vbl.googlegroups.com,
loke typed on Thu, 8 Oct 2009 09:24:26 -0700 (PDT):
> On Oct 7, 4:22 pm, "BillW50" wrote:
>> Innews:eCUe3AURKHA.4580@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl,
>> Ant typed on Sun, 04 Oct 2009 15:15:43 -0700:
>>
>>> Hello!
>>
>>> Am I understanding correctly that these terms are basically the
>>> same? If so, then why did my client's updated Windows 2000 SP4's
>>> chkdsk (/r /f parameters and rebooted to run it) on a HDD (NTFS) in
>>> an old Dell Optiplex system say there was a bad cluster and was
>>> able to move a file to a better place, but I rerun chkdsk in
>>> Windows 2000 and ran a chkdsk (no parameters) and it found 0 KB of
>>> bad sector?
>>
>>> Thank you in advance.

>>
>> Once a bad sector/cluster is found and marked as bad, it is no longer
>> part of the useable part of the drive. And IDE drives internally
>> hides them from outside sources, like Windows for example. Older MFM
>> drives didn't have this ability. And brand new hard drives always
>> have had bad sectors.
>>
>> And manufactures got tired of people returning hard drives because
>> they have some bad sectors on them. So under IDE, they now had the
>> ability to hide them from the outside. Although they can only hide
>> so many. Once this limit is hit, they will start to show up. Which
>> is rare, unless something is wrong with the drive.
>>
>> --
>> Bill
>> Asus EEE PC 702G8 ~ 2GB RAM ~ 16GB-SDHC
>> Windows XP SP2
>
> But if you use SMART, a drive status system built in the modern
> drives, you will know the bad sector problems, regardless, which
> should give you a good info about the health of the drive as well.
> Smartmontools on Linux does this very well.
> Loke

I use Hard Drive Sentinel which lists all of the SMART info. Nothing
about bad sectors though. Yet all hard drives have them when they are
manufactured. And the SMART info for all of my drives (about 15 of them)
all shows 100%. I also believe it was Google (who has tons of hard
drives) only found that SMART is only reliable for detecting pending
faults only about 60% of the time.

--
Bill
Gateway MX6124 ('06 era) - Windows XP SP2