bad sectors..

[Dragon]

well, i think my IBM 40 gig has bad sectors...i was tryin to copy files to my friend's comp, n then it jus wouldn't open certain folders, so i formatted it...and reinstalled windows xp pro on it, now it's being recgonized as a 30 gig, well my question is, is this hard drive dying? or is it safe to keep using it...the 30 gig of it

 

[Rick]

Sure you didn't format it in FAT32 instead of NTFS? Not only is NTFS a superior file system, but Microsoft has limited your ability to format your drive under FAT32 to 32GB.

How did you determine the drive has bad sectors? IBM's Drive Fitness utility should be the last word.

It also features a bad sector "repair".... Doesn't really repair them though.

If your drive was purchased recently and is still under the warranty period (minimum is usually one year, and often span to 3 years), you may want to call Hitachi and get it replaced. Hitachi has an online warranty checker to verify if your drive is under warranty or not.

 

[Dragon]

yeah, it used to be fat32, i changed it to NTFS, well it had trouble opening folders, it blocked off 10 gigs of the drive, i think it has bad sectors, when i was trying to make a partition, i used all that was available, and that was 30 gigs, i tried to scandisk it before i formatted, it said this disk may have bad sectors