Hi all,

I have a Seagate 7200.8 400 GB drive that once suffered temperatures that were too high. Since then it seems sometimes unreliable. There is no (important) data on the drive - no worries here.

I plan to use the drive as temporary storage when I'm shuffling data around between disks. The disk should therefore be "short-time-reliable"

What I already did is a full erase (zero fill) with the Seagate DiskWizard. But when I created a partition image with Acronis True Image I unfortunately got a verify error, so I guess that anything is still wrong after that zero fill.

My goal is to have the drive thoroughly tested for weak and bad sectors and have all those remapped that might create problems. If there are no spare sectors left to remap I don't care if disk size decreases due to sectors marked bad.

After some reading I'm now a bit puzzled, what is the best way to accomplish this. I have several questions:

- According to MHDD FAQ, I have to do three MHDD runs: Scan, Erase wait, Remap. Is it necessary to perform all three of these steps? Or is Remap enough? Does an MHDD scan help me anything if MHDD is booted from CD and therefore can't write a log file?

- Another possibility seems to be Victoria within Windows. Does it the same than MHDD or is it different? Does it make sense to use both programs?

- I used HDD Regenerator once and it helped me although I usually don't believe in such voodoo things. (Didn't know about MHDD back then and if MHDD would have been a superior solution). Can Regenerator do things that MHDD cannot?

Hopefully someone of the gurus here enlightens me

Kind Regards,
weaker

hdat2 perform the same work of hddregenerator, but it is freeware and works better!!!
to repair your hd the best solution is pc3000, but if you have not it, another utility to get the best from hd partially damage is on the way: "makebad" by myself, unfortunelly, i don't know where upload it, and even worse it is still unfinished (99% ready for beta testers)
Cya

Thanks, I will have a look at hdat2.

Uploading is no problem as long as there is rapidshare and megaupload. But if the software isn't ready for betatesters yet it's perhaps too early. What does your makebad do?

my utility translate as UNC sectors all these "weak" sector that normally are NOT relocatable.

When you consider it ready to be betatested, I may try your utility.