I have 4 HDDs. The first sector in all the 4 disks are bad. as a result though windows recognises the drive but cannot format or do anything with it. I tried to install XP / windows 7 on to them but can't. The installation proceeds , the disk and its capacity are recognised showing the entire disk as unformatted. on clicking format after a few minutes I get an error message that unable to format and instalation stops. same with Linux installation. On using the various proprietery sotware of the manufacturers the disk is detected but beyond that nothing much can be done. In dos mode scan disk shows only the first sector as bad rest of disk is good. In the DOS mode it is possible to format as fat16 but this is not being recognised in windows or linux.
Please can any one help.

Have you tried to make a partition that starts after the affected blocks then format the partition only not the whole area..
You can then use those hdd's as extra storage then.
Putting OS on might not succeed.

Fixing it with software is not possible.
Using these drivers further in this state is not recommend either.

_________________
It seems that the unluckiest people in the world are those that don't backup.
Free Solutions
Picasaweb- Pictures and movies | Dropbox - Documents and other..

Dear Ppumkin, Thanks for the prompt reply. I will do that and let you know.

Dear Ppumkin,
Tried you suggestion. Can partition the disk but cant format.
Please help

ppumkin is suggesting that you partition the drive with several partitions. Make the first partition large enough to include the bad sectors at the beginning of the drive. Then format the second partition and use it for your OS and data, if you trust the drive.

BTW, I'm assuming that your statement that "the first sector in all the 4 disks are bad" doesn't mean what it appears to mean, namely that only sector 0 is bad in all 4 drives. If sector 0 were bad, then partitioning would fail.

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.