"Bad" hdd

[banter]

I have just formatted and reinstalled winxp pro. I installed partition magic and it says that my c drive is "bad" - but everything seems to work ok !!

What's going on here ?? and what should i do if anything to sort it ?

 

[Landrvr]

It says that it's 'bad'.? It doesn't give anymore info as to the type of error and a code or anything, that seems unlike PM. What version of PM are you using and if it does give a more detailed explanation of why it's 'bad' what is that as well?

 

[banter]

I'm using pm7.
here is a screen shot of what is happening........

 

[Landrvr]

Maybe it's just me, but that picture looks as if it's been resized and the proportions were lost. I can't make out anything that it says.

 

[banter]

Sorry, it was because the forum wouldn't let me post a bigger pic.

I'll just explain it as best i can.

When i select the drive the drive and selct info, it says
partition type = bad
serial no = none

and that is all apart from some info about phisical sectors

 

[Landrvr]

It sounds like you may have physical damage to you HDD, or some bad sectors. PM may be able to do some repairs as your system stands; look in PM's help section about resetting bad sectors... that may get you somewhere.

You could also always pop in a boot disk and run scandisk, have it do the regular drive integrity tests and then do a surface scan as well. It will probably take a while, but that will at least get you moving in the right direction. I suspect that when you installed the OS it copied onto some bad sectors and that is why PM is giving you this message.

Worst case scenario your HDD dies and you need to get another one, but that really is WORST case scenario. You could just get off with having to reinstall.

 

[Zedric]

If XP works on the drive the drive isn't bad. PM is getting it wrong.

 

[Landrvr]

PM is picking up on something, and until he knows what it is; it may come back to give him problems later if he doesn't do anything about it.

Unless your post was full of sarcasm... ;-)

 

[Doctor Who]

I'd be very careful with PM and a defective hard drive, I had a similar probllem with an 18 gig SCSI drive, tried to delte the 1.5 gig NTFS partiton and then give it back to the 15 gig fat 32 drive, I didn't know there was bad sectors on it, and crunch, the drive died, never to work again.

Thinking about it, you cold try using some new IDE cables, your old cables maybe working but there might be something wrong with them.

 

[Zedric]

Originally posted by Landrvr
PM is picking up on something, and until he knows what it is; it may come back to give him problems later if he doesn't do anything about it.

Unless your post was full of sarcasm... ;-)

No I was serious.

partition type = bad
serial no = none

If this was true, then Windows would never even boot. What it depends on is another issue. I'd install SiSoft Sandra or some other (several if you wish) software for monitoring the hardware. Look in disk management (admin tools in XP) for instance. Is it still wrong? If not, then I think PM was smoking something bad during the installation. Try reinstalling it. If it still is wrong, then it could be more serious.

 

[Bob S]

Bad does not necessarily mean dead. I recently got Maxtor to replace a one year old drive, because I noticed disc slippage had started. This could lead to information loss and eventually a crash. It showed up because I was looking for it and then proved it to Maxtor using their diagnostic tool. Both Maxtor and WD have such tools and I'm sure Seagate, etc does too. These are DOS ultilities. Check it out if you can.