Hard drive - bad sectors

[12noon]

Hi,

Sorry about the time it's taken me to get back on here, but i've just had a week and a half of computer hell. My anti-virus software (Norton 2003) was about to run out and i would either have to pay for another years worth or buy another anti-virus program. So i thought i'd give McAfee a go. I uninstalled Norton ready to put my new McAfee 2005 anti-virus software in, but my computer lost all internet access after taking Norton out.

I know i have a hard drive problem because i have some bad sectors on my large (114GB) hard drive and Windows XP was on the large hard drive. I also have a small (13GB) hard drive and used to use that for saving data.

Anyway after removing Norton, some parts of Windows must have moved because everything to do with getting on the internet via my cable modem was broken and couldn't be fixed. Also everything to do with defrag and fixing my hard drive was also broken.

I tried alsorts to try and save things without having to wipe my large hard drive, but everything i could think of didn't work. I even installed Linux on my small hard drive (i could get on the internet using Linux) to try to see if i could save my large hard drive and windows using Linux.

Anyway at the end of the day (a week and a half later) i've had to save as much info as i could from my large hard drive, onto my small hard drive and reformat the large disk drive. I've lost alsorts because of this and some things i will never be able to get back.

So, if you've got a lot of stuff on your hard drive and don't have a back-up. You should go make yourself some CD's now !
BTW i did try restore system from backup, but my backup didn't work.

[12noon]

Oh and my question was going to be...

Does anyone have any good advice on what to do when you have bad sectors on your hard drive ?

[SensoVision]

hi Graham, I'm glad to see you back, you've been missed.
Sorry to hear all your problems with software, and hard drive, hopefully data which is lost wasn't so important and you can obtain it somewhere. By the way what kind of backup you've made and why it didn't work, maybe I or someone else would be able to help you to get it work if you post more details?
For me I've solved problems of backing up important data, I'm just burning CD-R once a month and during the month CD-RW with data updates, it's easy as all my important documents are stored on a single partition, I can easily restore my system running for about 20-30 minutes(that's include installing all programs and customizing desktop, it's all done automatically from the backup).

Answering your question about bad blocks I don't remember well but think that Norton's surface scan check for them and mark all bad ones so they wouldn't be used by the system.
As it seems Microsoft's chckdsk is also capable to do so http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/chkdsk.mspx
and if I'm not wrong some disks may relocate bad sectors themselves using reserved space on the disk.
But the best solution to deal with bad sectors is to replace hard drive IMHO, as if they appear there is a big chance that soon you'll end with a dead hard and it would only cause more problems... maybe it's still on warranty and you can replace it?

[12noon]

As far as i know, the hard drive was running red hot a few months ago and i think thats what started my problems. I did put a bigger fan it the computer though and also a second fan.

As for using Nortons surface scan. I think i did that a few months ago when my hard drive was running hot. I don't have the software now though. Also scandisk and chckdsk didn't work last week. Windows would re-start and start the scan/check and then it would give an error and windows would just open as normal, but without internet access.

I used Windows back-up and backed up my system on the hard drive that was broken... Now that was a bad idea wasn't it ! I'll be buying some more DVDs and CDs later and this time i will save everything to removable disk. Oh and i've just ordered a new 80GB hard drive. Wish i'd have gone for a normal hard drive though. I've ordered a USB 80GB external hard drive. I ordered before my system broke.

Oh yes and to top it all... My mouse broke again !
I've had to buy another mouse. Can you remember a few months ago, i was telling you that i tend to break mice?

[12noon]

Oh, just thought i should tell you that i couldn't get on the internet with Windows because i couldn't re-new my IP address. I was OK using Linux, but for some reason all the stuff to do with network connections and my ethernet and NIC card were broken in Windows on the large hard drive.