[rescue] Bad Sectors

[Brock Johnson]

Aaron Finley wrote:
> I have received a number of 100+gb IDE hard drives, in various states
> of operation.
> 
> Some drives are testing with 100 or more bad sectors in the first five
> minutes of a scan, so I am tossing them out.
> 
> Other drives may have one or two over the entire range of the scan (up
> to 200 GB).
> 
> How many bad sectors is bad? Are *any* bad sectors found with a scan
> justification for throwing out a drive? I understand that most drives
> ship with bad sectors which have been remapped, so any sectors I find
> with a scan are likkely to be new bad ones, pointing to imminent disk
> failure.. ?
> 
> I'm using Salvation Scan, freeware off of the Ultimate Boot Disk, if it matters.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Aaron Finley
> _______________________________________________
> rescue list - http://www.sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/rescue


If it's a lower-grade manufacturer (Maxtor and the budget model WD's 
spring to mind) I'd toss it. If the sectors marked as bad are in very 
close proximity, I'd toss it.

As well, I'd recommend running the manufacturer's testing program 
against the drive. I would guess most of those programs have tricks in 
them for manipulating that manufacturer's drives that 3rd party tools 
can't do. (Seatools and PowerMax both seem to from what I've seen, with 
respect to remapping bad sectors at least)