hi,

I have an old 20gb IBM IDE hard drive ( IC25N020ATDA04-0 ) with firmware DA30A. After many tests I found out that my bad sectors are not logical. Most of them are at the start of hard drive (first 1000 LBA's). I think the amount that hdd can reallocate is full, and that's why new bad sectors can not be deleted. I tried partitioning my hdd in a way that the bad sectors are not partitioned, but that did not work well

I think I have 2 solutions:
1) cut the capacity of hdd so that bad sectors are out of usable range. ( only problem with this method is I have to cut from START of the hdd, which I do not know how ?! )
2) move the g-list to p-list and scan hdd again so that it can find bad sectors and move them to (now empty) g-list. I don't know if it is the same as hdd self test ? anyway how should I move g-list to p-list ?

- I do not have anything on the hdd, so I am not looking for data recovery.
- I do not mind if hdd capacity decreases a couple of gigabytes (if it was necessary).I just want to be able to use it, because it is on an old laptop and I can not replace it.
- I have used MHDD and many other tools, but none of them could help with physical bad sectors and repairing them. I saw only Salvation Data had a feature to move g-list to p-list, but I'm not sure if it can help with IBM hdd.

I have searched for days, and I couldn't find how to fix this, I would really appreciate it if you can help me out, thanks in advance.

You dont have to stick to this 20GB IDE drive as there are still lots of old / used but
still good drives around 20, 30, 40, 60, 80, 100, 120, 160GB and even higher shouldnt
be a problem - even if your computer is old.

If you want to "tune" your old laptop a little bit, you even could look for a mSATA SSD
and use it with an mSATA to 2,5" IDE adapter - thats usually much cheaper than a
SSD IDE drive

I would not go on with such an old defective drive - thats waisting time

+++

Or you could just take the money you would spend on shipping to Portugal, throw that dinosaur in the fossil bin where it belongs, and spend the money on a newer model.

_________________
Data Medics - Hard Drive, SSD, and RAID Data Recovery Service Company

Thank you all for replying.
I can not use anything other than IDE because its pentium 3 laptop...

anyway I wanted to fix this myself, and maybe learn something ( as I have learned many things trying to fix it, up until now...) . I wanted to know if any of those 2 solutions are possible or not and if I can do it myself without any special hardware ( like that HRT card) .

You are wasting your time trying to repair this drive, it's "end of life".

Just go to ebay and buy another one.

_________________
PC Image Data Recovery
http://www.pcimage.co.uk

New!! HDD-PCB.COM for all your PCB and donor HDD requirements!

you are right, tools are important ...

The only thing I needed was moving g-list to p-list which could have been done with Salvation Data software, but unfortunately this was for some maxtor hdd I think. That's why I thought I can fix my hdd with software only...



I know that, but I was curious if this can be done with software solutions. I know what should be done, but I don't know the "how"s .