Bad sectors on a hard drive, is there an application that runs on linux?

Question

I'm fixing laptop, and the hard drive has several bad sectors on it. My intent is to get windows back on it (it is a friends computer), but windows won't install until these bad sectors are fixed. I was able to load ubuntu on the laptop as a temporary fix and so I have an os to help the diagnosis and extract some data from the corrupt windows installation. Is there any disk checking utilities avaliable for linux that also attempts to repair bad sectors?

Answer 1

Though a drive can still run good for a few years if it has a few bad sectors, it is often a sign that the drive is going bad. If I were you I would download the Drive Manufacturers boot disk (links for WD and Seagate drives) to check the drive, sometimes you can get these from the computer manufactures. Doing a full media scan will check for bad sectors, when it find them the utility will either internally remap with reserve sectors, or if the reserves sectors have been used up you can permanently mark them as bad.

If you are still having problems you can also try doing a "zero" wipe of the drive, which will erase every sector of the drive, but can force the drive to remap bad sectors. This can be done either with the drive utility, with an option like "Full erase" or "Write Zeros to drive". Also this can be done with a Linux boot disk with the command: dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda. Make sure you only have the drive you want wiped hooked up, unless you are certain of which drive belongs to the Linux device name, like /dev/sda or /dev/sdb.

Answer 2

It depends on the type of disk you have. If it is a SCSI drive, there is software (scsibadblock) that will mark bad blocks for you. This must be run from another disk or live-dvd as it will generally wipe the disk being checked.



If it is not a SCSI disk, some file system creation programs (mkfs.xxx) will mark bad blocks as an option, although these do not generally survive re-partitioning or re-creating the file system.



Another option is often in the disk controller software, although this is very rare these days, and generally only available on servers, if at all.

Answer 3

The previous answer is right. However, if there are enough bad sectors that Windows refuses to install, it's time to write off the drive. It can't be trusted. Maybe you could use it in a RAID array if you know you'll be able to swap it out with a new one relatively soon, but I wouldn't trust it, especially as a system drive.

Answer 4

what if you mounted it as an external hard drive using a USB drive tray? You could connect it to an existing system, copy the data, then reformat the hard drive. If you can get it to mount and access the data you should also be able to run disk utilities to deal with the bad sectors.

Answer 5

I study assorted the responses, and it appears like maximum of those adult males rather understand what they are speaking approximately. I concern approximately one element. 10 gigs of undesirable sectors is an detrimental lot. Makes me think of roughly actual injury to a disc. i'm thinking approximately an rather 'head crash." whilst the wear and tear is intense adequate, it would desire to reason a study head, passing over the broken section, to bounce around somewhat and reason much extra injury in yet another component to the disc. style of like a skateboarder, getting his wheel jambed right into a crack, or against a pebble. The boarder is going down and damages the factor walk along with his helmet. (ok, undesirable occasion, yet i'm hoping you understand what I recommend) a million. in case you choose to do the defrag, and all the undesirable sectors are placed mutually, save an eye fixed on issues. Do an occasional defrag, back to visual show unit for modifications in the development. 2. If next defrags instruct a upward push in undesirable sectors, even in a distinctive component to the disc, you're turning out to be new head crashes, brought about via the unique injury. My fears may well be intense, yet like in diagnosing any style of issues, the development of indications tell as plenty with the aid of fact the indications do. back up your documents precise away, in simple terms in case.