It's only a few week I am studying about hd, and I have recovered from friends many damaged hd to experiment with they......
-) I have NOT got Pc300 , I may only count on freeware software...
Suppose the follows:
Hd Maxtor 80 gb with smart raw relocate parameter 1271!!!!! many weak (not bad, only warnings) sectors, every try to relocate fail: G/list is full I presume.
When performin on this hd something like f.e. reproducing an avi or a wav file, I experiment freezing and slowdown; performing in a dos box the command copy sometime give me errors: (retry/abort/ignore), even with a retry alway solve the situation, btw hd is unstable!!!
-) Normally an hd come with a P/list (product list) plus a G/list (Grow list) of physically defect.
-) The P-list in invisible for hd controller and does NOT slowdown hd operations
-) The G-list is visible for hd controller but not for the host, when a read-write problem does occours, the defective sector is added to the G-list; G-list slightly slowdown hd operations
-) when the G-list is full the better think we may perform is the follows: use pc300 to move the G-list on the P-list, then we may reset the old G-list, from this moment hd controller is again able in relocate defects when necessary; a remark: moving the old G-list in P-list has reduced the hd capacity, right? BTW now hd works very well!!
-) Coz I told you I do NOT own Pc3000, I think the best I may perform only utilizing freeware software is the follows:
1) backup my data
2) low level format hd
3) run a scansion (F4) with mhdd or victoria
4) take note of ALL lba warnings (access >500ms)
5) use "inside" mhdd the command "makebad" to manually mark as UNC all these defective sectors
6) come back to window
7) perform a re-partition and a FULL (no fast) format
Now OS automatically mark as bad all that UNC sectors, from now performing chkdsk on my hd will tell me that I have bad sector, btw the hd now works very well: no longer freeze while playing video, no "retry/ignore) while copying files, etc......
I have experimented with (for the moment) 7 problematic hd, and now they works very well.
So please Hdguru, tell me, is all my work totally illogical? Please explain to me, but remember I CAN'T utilize Pc3000!!

My utility (makebad) is able in automatizing pass from 2) to 5)
A full englis translation is also on the way, but I need your sincere opinion, if all this is illogical, is better I stop to lose my time....

Thanks for your patience!!!

There is one thing the size doesnot change when u transfer defects from Glist to Plist .
The better way to use this hdd is u can use scandisk or Nortron Disk Doctor to mark the bad sector do the OS doesnot use the marked areas .

Norton diskdoctor or similiar utilities DOES marks as bad only the really bad sector, and not these "annoying" weak sectors.
These weak sectors btw are responsable for slowdown and occasional errors; after marking them as UNC, and performing a full reformat under windows, will solve these problems I get when f.e. when I reproduce an avi file. This is why the high level windows format is NOT able in correcting this unc, so they are marked as bad.
Yes, at this point >chkdsk will tell me that I have bad sector, but now hd works very well: no more freeze, slowdown and occasional errors....
**********************************
Pc300 use:
how is possible if I move the entire G-list in the P-list that capacity is NOT reduced? if the G-list was f.e. 20Mb, adding this 20Mb in the P-list, does not short of 20 Mb the hd capacity?
Many thanks

Hi,

First I would zerofill the drive and see wether the slow sectors remain.
Plist growing BTW doesn't affect drive capacity, it has some spare cyls
Capacity is set by a DWORD in the FW.

pepe

In my case slow sectors remain....
So if I HAVE not GOT pC300, do you approve my approach?

Ah!! OK!!! Ehm.... please what is this FW?

Plist has its own additional capacity it does not matter the hdd capacity .
And Glist has its own capacity .

Ok!!! I'm learning...
BTW, on an hd suppose 80Gb, how much (aproximativally) may be P-list and G-list capacity?
I ask this because after correctting all these "weak" sector with my utility, hd have now available only 58 Mb....
So maybe, in this case that even Pc3000 may not perform a miracle....