Data recovery and disk repair questions and discussions related to old-fashioned SATA, SAS, SCSI, IDE, MFM hard drives - any type of storage device that has moving parts
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Is zero-filling best way to get rid of bad sectors

October 6th, 2016, 15:51

Hello,

I've heard many times that zero-filling is the way to get rid bad sectors - logical ones. But I just wonder. Isn't just formatting good enough?

After formatting the drive all sectors for data are regarded by OS as free to use. If there was a logical bad sector before formatting, now after formatting the sector is considered free to use and new data can be written to it. I don't see any reason why formatting is not good enough to get rid of logical bad sectors.

Re: Is zero-filling best way to get rid of bad sectors

October 6th, 2016, 16:15

I'm not sure what you're suggesting here, but there's no such thing as a "logical bad sector" on any modern hard drive. Remapping of bad sectors is all handled internally by the HDD itself these days, so if your system is reporting bad sectors it's because of degraded hardware that needs to be replaced.

Re: Is zero-filling best way to get rid of bad sectors

October 6th, 2016, 17:09

I thought division into logical and physical bad sectors was a common knowledge.

http://www.addictivetips.com/windows-ti ... pair-them/

As we can read from the link above: "Unlike physical bad sectors, logical or soft bad sectors may develop on hard drives on account of many reasons. The logical bad sector is a sector which suddenly becomes inaccessible to disk controller software or OS. When an OS attempts to read / write data to logical bad sector, it takes quite a long time to complete the requested operation, and even if the operation gets completed with no apparent issues, users face problems while reading the data written on logical bad sectors. However, unlike physical bad sectors, this type of bad sectors are totally repairable."

My question remains open and valid

Re: Is zero-filling best way to get rid of bad sectors

October 6th, 2016, 18:10

I thought it was common knowledge that there is a division into logical and physical bad sectors. I can't give you links as I am a new user and I am not allowed to. However I will quote info from a website: "Unlike physical bad sectors, logical or soft bad sectors may develop on hard drives on account of many reasons. The logical bad sector is a sector which suddenly becomes inaccessible to disk controller software or OS. When an OS attempts to read / write data to logical bad sector, it takes quite a long time to complete the requested operation, and even if the operation gets completed with no apparent issues, users face problems while reading the data written on logical bad sectors. However, unlike physical bad sectors, this type of bad sectors are totally repairable."

(I can't give you the source because my post will be blocked)

Additionally:
In MHDD there is an option to create bad sectors (logical ones I guess). The command is called MAKEBAD. During this process MHDD asks you to assign bad sector to LBA numer.

PS
Hell, I can't add posts because my posts are blocked by administrators/moderators. Please, I am not s spammer.
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