Hi!
This utility is NOT for you if you just own Pc3000!!!!
This utility is intended for people (like me) that may no spent too much money, and wanna use only freeware programs to repair hd!!
If your hard disk has "weak" sectors on it, you may consider in using MAKEBAD
http://files.hddguru.com//index.php?&di ... ft/Makebad

Actual version is a 0.9 beta.

hi,
- tell us , this software is working in win 32 or DOS 16 environment.

The program need windows only for generate the dos boot diskette.

hi,
- good program but not working for me.
- give me solutiotion in Italy menu, after selection menu 2, start 2.bat, next tutto.exe , run mhdd twice with ID and waiting for ????
- insert alt x ( exit ) batch file run procedure, after 3 times of restart, give log from Mhdd, it's all.
- what can i do , to do with this solution.
- thanks for reply.
- sorry for this, but is beta version.

Wait for:
you are sure to be working on the right hd, otherways select the right port by Shift_f3.
When you're sure (press F2) to be on the right hd, at the mhdd prompt, type the word: "hdok" without "" and do NOT press return.
The procedure will now start, please do NOT type anything

A full english version is on the way, but before, please read the enterlly file readme.txt
Does the 0) option work with your HD?

Thanks for the tool !

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But please, tell me does it work for you?

I don't have a hard drive with weak sectors here but the program loads fine. I will test it tomorrow with damaged hard drives.
Also i can read Italian, so no problem there.
This tool will mark as "Bad" the sectors that are "weak" (takes more time to read/write than a good sector) so that the OS will never use those sectors again, right ?

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yes, you're right, and for me is a great satisfascion you have full understand what my program perform.............
Thanks for testing.... and Happy Chistmas

Hi!!
Just released a new version of makebad, actul it is 0.9.1 beta:
-) now in full english (even if in my terrible english!!!)
-) available also in iso cd version

Thanks to all!!

OK. I have two hard drives, laptop HDDs (20gb) whose only problems are groups of bad sectors. Been looking all over the internet for a program that's smart enough to detect slow sectors and mark them as bad before I format the drive for use.

I find this "makebad" program, I guess it works with MHDD, which I hadn't even seen until now. OK, so I download it. No readme, no way to even extract the files without making/using an image or cracking the files open. Nothing at all. OK, so I break down and burn it - I was planning on just putting it on my bootable USB stick and using that. Boot it up, OK.

I start at the top of the menu, 0. Okay... strike a key when ready. WTF? What's this prompt? Exit.

Another prompt??? EXIT!

Okay, quit?

WHOOOA!!! ERASE? OK? Y? WTF IS IT DOING?? Then it stops at some prompt with a "y" in place of a number. Umm... okay... I press enter, and get dropped at another prompt. Here, I'm just cramming Alt-X like crazy... STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP!!! It just keeps erase, erase, erase, format, wipe, obliterate, kill, destroy, mutilate!!!! GAAH!!

Okay, so I have to type "hdok" to start it.

MHDD>hdok_

... 10 seconds later, nothing. 15 seconds. 30. 45. 1 minute. How long am I supposed to wait for this thing? OK, so I hit enter. Umm... nothing. Still nothing. Alt-X?

KILL! DESTROY! ERASE! WIPE! CLEAR! ERASE! SCAN! ERASE! WIPE! SCAN! OMG OMG OMG!!!11

... WHAT???

So... I think it has a bug. XD

Yes, I was wrong about this: in fact you have to burn before and then have to read the readme.txt, please excuse, this is my first time in releasing a program for the web..

Ah, I see. I burned it but still couldn't find the readme file - I downloaded isobuster, extracted the boot image from the CD, then cracked the boot image open

I'm still unable to use it though... "hdok" never continues and when it does I'm left with a totally screwy system.

I'm running "scan" now in mhdd, I don't know if it writes anything to the drive or not but my drive's really feeling the bumps... it was rolling along at 15MB/s until it hit the bad areas, now it's about to fly apart!

How can I get around this "hdok" problem...?

edit: Nevermind... "scan" is showing me something interesting: practically every sector past 15,000,000 is completely worthless! No idea how that happened to this drive, or what could physically cause that, but... I guess there you have it. Really weird...

i will look deeper in the problem, for now you may perform the follows:
1) backup your data!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
2) Low level format your hd with my utility opt. 1)
3) run mhdd, select the right port of your hd, press F2 to see hd parameter so you're sure you're working on the right hd, then press F4 twice, the scan will start and will take very long, at the end exit (alt-x)
4) at the dos prompt type:
q:>marca followed by return, and wait..... do NOT press other key!!!
5) If still does NOT works, let me know

CYA!!!

You might have a damaged hard drive "head". Also you can have a damaged plate. At any rate you will not be able to isolate the head without *very very very very very* expensive commercial software.
(Unless someone can suply some vendor specific ATA commands)
If your sectors are already marked as "Bad", then the "MakeBad" utility will not work for you.
"MakeBad" only marks as "Bad" the sectors that MHDD shows as "weak", meaning that the time needed to access them is bigger than normal.
Hope this helps, at any rate if you don't need to recover data from your drive then the best choice is to buy a new one and live on.

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Has anyone had success in running this utility? I have run it on a drive that has 9 sectors that are above the 150ms range. But I can not see if it has actually done anything.
I have re-run the utility and get same results of 9 sectors above 150ms. I don't think I understand how it blocks them from being used by the operating system.
Please let me explain my situation here so as to get a better understanding of what I am trying to do.

I have two hard drives here. One having 9 sectors with >150ms and another with 2 sectors >150ms. Neither drive shows any BAD sectors in the scan, only these slow ones that show a "warning". I would like to block access to these so that the Windows installations does not try and use them. Chkdsk only reallocates bad sectors, not slow ones.

Readme says:
If you have performed with no success what is described in Q10, maybe that the relocation SMART table of your hd is full, BTW you may still eliminate the problem with my utility.
Makebad works in this fashion: transform all these weak sectors in really "bad" UNC sector, so after this operation you may re-format(a FULL reformat and an NTFS partition is required!) your hd under Window, so now OS will mark all these UNC sectors as bad cluster and no longer will utilize it.
From this moment performing a
>chkdsk x:
will tell you that bad sector does exists

When I run the program again, it simply shows same results whereas the same sectors are showing as >150ms and not as being UNC.
Can someone enlighten me?

I tried to "edit" my last post but was unable to see the Edit button..

I have also tried to use the MAKEBAD command from within normal mhdd on the sectors that is showing the "Warning" for >150MS and appears to have completed successfully. But upon a rescan it is not showing them as had being made into UNC.

from the FAQ of makebad:
Q1) My hd does NOT support write of UNC sectors, what can I do?
A1) One of my beta tester have told that there is an utility called "Spinrite 6.0" who may
solve this problem, unfortunelly I have NOT it.......
You have to have your hd formatted and recognized by dos, otherways it will not work, then you have to run the option "recover data", let that Spinrite write a few second (1-2 sec is enough), then if you'll retry the option 0) of makebad, your hd will be writable for UNC
BTW, if you try in using spinrite on an hd who have NO partition (f.e. you have just LLF it), if
it was able in writing UNC, then will no longer be!!!
A low level format does NOT influence the possibility of write UNC on hd, only Spinrite may
turn on and off this feature?!?!!?!
What does Spinrite perform????
If you'll know the answer, please let me know.

Thank you for your reply danrevella.
I do have spinrite and will try that. I haven't used it in quite a long time so I can't remember all it's functions.
But it will come back to me I'm sure once I fire it up.

I wasn't sure what was going on... Found it hard to believe I was working with 2 different sata drives and both didn't support writing of UNC. Both only about 4 years old.
I thought this mainly applied to older IDE type drives. But hey what do I know lol.

I will post you something again once I check it out

Unfortunately that trick didn't work for me with SpinRite.
I partitioned and formatted the drive and then ran recovery with SpinRite for a couple minutes.
I then canceled it out and ran the makebad utility using option 0.
The unfortunate side is when I run option 0, it scrolls through so fast between the controllers and stuff
I can't even see the result if good or bad with the hard drive. It checks the hard drive in the middle somewhere
but before and after that, it tries checking the controllers (Intel). I don't know why it is trying to check the controllers
when I had already selected the hard drive. If option 0 checked just the hard drive in question I would be able to tell for sure.

So I ran the makebad utility and selected option 2 and when it came across the 9 sectors <500ms it just showed the warning for
them and didn't do anything else. I also did the makebad command from within mhdd and selected the sector to makebad and
said it completed... But on next scan it did not show it as being UNC.