Hard Disk Track 0 Bad

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greatman05

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Ok, guys, I have a serious problem now. One of the hard drives I have has a bad Track 0. I didn't get this error, but I noticed it when I used spinrite to try to recover the drive. Any way to fix track 0?
 
I believe you can remap bad traks on IBM/Hitachi hard drives. Other than that, there's nothing you can do.
 
"Track 0" = Dead

Send the drive back. If you can't, get a new one... Storage is very cheap anymore. Even if you did fix it, I wouldn't trust my data on it and I don't believe you would either.

HDD Regen is a possibility, if you're looking to 'repair'. I would only use it for recovering data though, as you'll just be hiding a greater problem.
 
Guys, I asked that question to see what you would say. Personally, I have found a program that CAN repair Track 0 Bad HDDs, as well as allow me to reformat them with Acronis Disk Director. It's called DRevitalize Light. THis has a VERY high rate of sucess with repairing HDDs, and works on floppies too. Not only that, it works on FAT8, FAT12, FAT16, FAT32, NTFS, etc. Remember that TRACK 0 BAD I told you about? See, you guys are built on "If it's bad, get a new one." Well, running DRevitalize overnight, I was able to reformat the HDD with FAT32. I continued it today (WITH SMART OFF in the BIOS, AS INDICATED IN DREVITALIZE'S INSTRUCTIONS) And so far, very few errors have been found on it. By the way, the HDD is a Western Digital WD1000BB-00CAA0. And no, if you checked under System #2 in my profile, you would know that it is NOT in the system I'm using to write this message. If you want the program, email me and I will send it to you. The email is chavez544@gmail.com, and it is my primary address. By the way, I'm not worried about spam. I get it enough browsing the Web like I do.
 
cyl 0 trk 0 is critical with the volid, partition map and boot sectors in it.
if trk 0 is bad, even though you have 'reconditioned or recovered',
I would immediately start planning for a total replacement and a restore.

get a full backup asap, minimize changes and get the new HD asap.
 
Like Rick said HDDRegen will likely fix it too. I've fixed a couple drives with it in the past, one is in a system I don't use anymore, and another is 1 of 4 hdds I have in my current main system.

But the point was/is that something caused it to go bad in the first place, and unless you know what that was and can prevent it from happening again, then you should be more cautious than normal with that drive.
 
I've used hard drives with bad sectors before. I don't know what caused it because the last person to use that computer was my 8yr cousin, and she don't know what she did. While S.M.A.R.T says the drive is failing (It's only been in the best of conditions and only in use for 5 yrs...) I'm confident that the HDD will still work after the regenerative process. (Besides, I can't afford a new one, and I still want to have 3 comps...) F.Y.I., I have a HDD from 1993-1995, 1.6 GIG and still beating, No bad clusters, no HDD read, seek, or write errors, etc. Also, DRevitalize is like a FREE version of HDDRegen, since they basically both have the same interface. Difference is HDDRegen only works with HDDs, and DRevitalize is FREE, and works with both HDDs and FDDs. Any questions? (I'm sure that many of you have very old HDDs that still work....)
 
greatman05 said:
...While S.M.A.R.T says the drive is failing (It's only been in the best of conditions and only in use for 5 yrs...) I'm confident that the HDD will still work after the regenerative process. (Besides, I can't afford a new one, and I still want to have 3 comps...)
just be careful and don't get bit, it's real easy to be penny wise and dollar foolish here. consider the impact of lost time and maybe even some lost data *IF* it dies. S.M.A.R.T. failure is the MFG telling you to be careful!:knock:
(I'm sure that many of you have very old HDDs that still work....)
sure; I've got a Quantum from back in '89 and it's 100% reliable; zero bad tracks from day-1 and still 'til today :)
 
What does MFG mean? Oh and thanks, just wanted to have a little fun. It's still repairing the drive right now, and when it finishes, I will try to ReInstall WinXP on the drive. On and another thing: Why does old technology remain reliable and working while new technology ****s up all the damn time?
 
greatman05 said:
What does MFG mean? Oh and thanks, just wanted to have a little fun. It's still repairing the drive right now, and when it finishes, I will try to ReInstall WinXP on the drive. On and another thing: Why does old technology remain reliable and working while new technology ****s up all the damn time?
mfg: common abreviation for manufacter.
new vs. old? that's Madison Ave marketing aka planned obsolescence. it's that
wonderfully effecient warrantee that expires 10 days before the statisically proven failure date :(
 
greatman05 said:
...Mabye we should reurn to the good ol' days of DOS...LOL
no, that's just simple HD physics and the consequence of
a single point of failure.
 
Somebody correct me if I'm wrong.

In DOS the hd head was parked unless it was writing or reading from the disk, which is why you didn't have to "shutdown" before turning off the computer, you could just press the switch. In Windows the hd head is over the platters the whole time, and going to shutdown or hibernate parks the heads so you can safely transport the computer.

I would think that hds would suffer less track failures/bad sectors if the heads were parked unless needed (which would be impossible for Windows to do).
 
greatman05 said:
Uh-huh....So DOS did less wear and tear on hard drives?
SCSI controllers have this feature to PARK on power off

good technologies have better default features :giddy:
 
greatman05 said:
? A single point failure?
SPF. A term used in hi reliability systems where duplication and replication are
used to avoid system shutdown / failures. Eg: if you have only one NIC, then
any failure along that path leads to lack of connectivity; the (1) NIC is a SPF.
Add a second NIC would remove this SPF condition.

Likewise, RAID-1 mirrors the HD to allow one HD to have a mechanical failure
and the system will still be operative; avoiding SPF.

Linux filesystems duplicate critical information to avoid an SPF due to a bad block, avoiding a SPF condition.

SPF analysis is usually applied only to server systems.
 
SNGX1275 said:
Somebody correct me if I'm wrong.

In DOS the hd head was parked unless it was writing or reading from the disk, which is why you didn't have to "shutdown" before turning off the computer, you could just press the switch.
To my understanding, there's a special cylinder with a ramp that when told to
PARK, the arm retracts and the head is actually allowed to SIT ON THE PLATTER,
thus making the HD safe for transport.

Thus, a HD can only be parked when powered off
 
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