hey guyss

i noticed that my hard disk has certain bad sectors in one of my partitions...
today morning when i ran chkdsk /f to that drive , it said that 48Kb was lost in bad sectors

but i formatted it once, and checked for errors and all.
then when i ran chkdsk /f to it, it says 6GB was lost in bad sectors!!

althou ive taken backup of the data, is there any way to retrieve dat space???

Welcome to the PC Guide forums!
Usually when a hard drive utility marks a sector as bad, it is not repairable, in fact you should backup any data and prepare to replace that drive.

I mostly agree. Sometimes a drive will develop a bad sector, mark it bad so it won't be used, and carry on with no problems for a good while. My 2.3GB Maxtor did that, it's still running fine 3 years later. Never developed any more bad spots. I suspect it was related to repeated power outages where I lived at the time. (average once a week, usually while I was playing Quake...) More often though, it will keep developing more bad spots until it goes downhill so bad you're forced to get a new drive.

In general, my advice is the same as above, backup anything you don't want to lose, start shopping and watch the drive. If it develops more bad spots, shop quicker...

then when i ran chkdsk /f to it, it says 6GB was lost in bad sectors!!
Pete,
I think this HDD is going bad really fast, that's why I answered the post in the way I did.
I do agree whatever caused the HDD sector errors is usually repetitive and is bad news. In Pete's case a Uninterruptable Power Supply may have prevented some of those bad sectors, as will proper shut down of the PC vs hard shutdowns. I grew up northeast of Pete and thunderstorms and lightning were real hazards to electrical and electronic equipment. A UPS will save sectors from power outages and lightning strikes in about 95-98% of the cases in those conditions. The last 5% are why you pay for insurance policies.

I didn't say you answered incorrectly, and if that really was 6GB and not a typo, I fully agree that the drive is toasted. 6GB worth of bad spots would usually take quite a while for chkdsk to run. ANd if that turned up practically overnight, I'd be surprised. Disk damage of that scope usually take a few weeks to a few months, although nothing has been posted to indicate this isn't something that has been an ongoing issue for a year.

I didn't say you were wrong, in fact you were right, I just didn't agree 100%...There are occasions replacement is not immediately required, I usually prefer to check it a few times and see. If it gets worse daily, it's on its way.

I did have to make some assumptions about what fidelitygastro was posting,
Is the 6GB actually bad sectors or not available for other reasons, like hidden partition files or a BIOS limitation on the primary partition?
In that situation he would want to have other reasons before replacing the drive.

guys

when i ran chkdsk for dat drive, it listed as: 6GB in bad sectors

I believe you.
:)

I believed what you posted.
:)

Ok, that's what we needed, confirmation that it wasn't a typo. With 6GB bad I'd say get ready to replace it. That's a lot of bad spots...