hi
i'm an amateur seeking some advice on how to reuse a defective drive. it's a 160GB 2,5" drive i replaced in someone's laptop. i checked it and it had some bad sectors, so the owner decided to replace it with a new one, because he can't afford an unreliable drive. i recovered the stuff he wanted, he is happy and i'm left with the "junk".
as it was laying on a shelf for the past few months and i ran out of space on my lappy, i decided to give it a chance. i want to use it as a space for stuff i don't mind losing.
using systemrescuecd and unix badblocks i gathered a list of bad sectors (1024b blocks) - there are about 20 of them. by looking at the numbers, i think i could use most of the drive's space except of 2 or 3 ranges of blocks. i'd like to create a partition with ntfs filesystem. and here's the dillema:
1. is it better to make 3 or 4 ntfs partitions ommiting the bad blocks ("manually")
-or-
2. to make one big partition and pray to Lord that ntfs detects and marks the bad blocks i already know about
?

is there some kind of tool to manually feed the partitioning/formatting utility with a list of defective sectors i acquired using badblocks? (i know unix utilities can do this - but i don't want a ext?fs - compatibility, you know)
is there a way to make sure windows doesn't allocate MFT on those bad blocks? (i read bad-blocks-mft-t12787.html#p84111)

TIA for advice

You could start by zerofilling the drive with MHDD etc. Hardware bad sectors should get remapped and software bads should get fixed.

_________________
You don't have to backup all of your files, just the ones you want to keep.

strange thing i noticed, after doing a write-read test (-w swich) and then repeating it, the reallocated sector count doesn't change in SMART.
atm it's being tested with a different pattern and new bad blocks appear on the list... i'm getting more and more sceptical.

zerofill is a cosmetic solution but can be sufficient for amateur. Otherwise need special gear and knowledge to make it feel "brand new" again

P.S. if when filling other error appear, the drive need to be serviced for good and is NOT reliable for storage until fixed.

[a few beers later]

http://pastebin.ca/1519947

the reallocated sector count increased by 4 (raw value) after this test.
vote:
a) give it a spin
b) let it rust

I have option c) repair it - but have to send it in.