Bad Sector issues and questions

[xxsilk109xx]

I am working on a computer for a guy that would not boot into windows. Its a Toshiba Satellite laptop with Windows Vista.

The pc would start to boot into windows and would not ever boot, even in safe mode.

I booted up the ultimate boot cd to be able to run a chkdsk without any write protect issues and it says it cant find the drive. Finally in the Explorer it shows the C drive as being 1mb..the drive is 120 GB

So I thought it could be bad sectors in the hard drive, so I used HDtune and did a quick scan and came up with about 4 red dots indicating a damaged sector.

I then booted up hirens boot disc and am using HD Regenerator 1.51, it has scanned 1577 MB and already found and recovered 72 bad sectors..

Is this a sign that the hard drive is about to fail? I have had issues like this before and found like 2-5 bad sectors, but I have not ever seen this many on a scan before. (count is now up to 74)

Is this a sign of a failing drive? I have heard that this does not mean that the drive is going to go bad and I have heard that it DOES mean that the drive is on its last legs.

Any suggestions?
(right now its at 77) lol

 

[Psychoticus]

Actually I'm working on a very similar issue, only difference being it's a 250GB hdd and MAC OSX as the OS. As for your question, yes i would strongly advise that if you can back all the data up from the hdd and get a new one asap, if the data is very important then there are companies like CBLtech.com.au that work their magic on the physical hdd to recover data but they start @ about 500 and can go up into the thousands.

 

[MrUnknown]

definately a symptom of the HDD going bad as there shouldn't be that many bad sectors.

also, if you are going to use HDD Regenerator and profit off of it, you should purchase it.

 

[xxsilk109xx]

definately a symptom of the HDD going bad as there shouldn't be that many bad sectors.

also, if you are going to use HDD Regenerator and profit off of it, you should purchase it.

Oh wow, it was just on a boot cd, I didnt know that it was not freeware. I will look into that.

 

[MrUnknown]

My apologies. A very large portion of the software on Hiren's is commercial software with no license. HDD Regenerator is also fairly cheap.

 

[iisjman07]

using HD Regenerator 1.51, it has scanned 1577 MB and already found and recovered 72 bad sectors..

It sounds as though the drive is almost dead.

 

[MobileTechie]

For future reference, if you're looking to run chkdsk I'd use the relevant Windows install disk instead of UBCD. I find that the the Windows UBCD doesn't find some drives anyway plus using the install disk you can be sure you are using the right chkdsk for the OS and can also run fixmbr and fixboot which are often relevant to non-booting problems like you describe.

 

[xxsilk109xx]

For future reference, if you're looking to run chkdsk I'd use the relevant Windows install disk instead of UBCD. I find that the the Windows UBCD doesn't find some drives anyway plus using the install disk you can be sure you are using the right chkdsk for the OS and can also run fixmbr and fixboot which are often relevant to non-booting problems like you describe.

Well it seems to me that everytime i do that, it wont let me run all of the chkdsk options because it says the drive is write protected or something similar so I cant get that far and my drive in dos always seems to be
<X:\.....>
any idea on how to do this?

 

[MobileTechie]

Sounds like you just need to specify the C: ( e.g. chkdsk /f c: ) or change to the c: before running it. Sounds like you're trying to run it on the X: which is not the disk.

 

[xxsilk109xx]

Sounds like you just need to specify the C: ( e.g. chkdsk /f c: ) or change to the c: before running it. Sounds like you're trying to run it on the X: which is not the disk.

Ahhhhhh, I guess that would work if I specified the disk huh??
Im such an idiot lol