HD bad sector help

Hey, I have a bad sector on my hd (4kb bad sector). I am running xp and this shows up in the summary (i can only run scandisk on restart).......anyway, what type of problems can a bad sector cause? do i need a new drive...
as long as we're asking....if i get a new drive, i notice they connect with ATA...but my current hd connects with IDE....do i need anything new?

 

Nothing!??!

 

Hi there!

You may be at the start of a "Cascade Failure".

Go to the Drive Maker's website and download thier diagnostic utilities and run a good thurough check on the HDD.

Western Digital's utility is cal;led "Data lifeguard" and if the drive is under warranty, then any of the test fail, then they replace the drive.


Hope this helps!


Good Luck!

ST

 

That doesnt sound good...what persay are the symptoms of a cascade failure? my hd is a fujitsu mpd3084at

 

Casecade failures are just like they sound. Hard drives are plates on a spool. They spin between 5000 and 10,000 rpm. Now imagine throwing a nut into your car engine when it's reved up. Yea the nut did a ding in the first cylander, but it's going to bounce right? Same thing with a Hard Disk Drive (HDD). This could be the initial 'scratch' on the surface of the platters, and things could (not an absolute) get worse. Hope this helps.

 

could this cause the computer to freeze when idle? If i need a new drive, what is recommended for like 60mb...looking for economical solution

 

Freezes are from multiple areas, but a HDD going bad could cause it to hang up. Constantly writing and re-writing will significantly slow a system down to a crawl, if not stop. 60GB's are cheap since the 200 + GB's are out. For now, don't spend until you know what the problem is. Save your data often.

 

If you do end up buying a new drive, I'd recommend one of the 7200 RPM drives with the 8mb cache. Both Maxtor and WD are making them in a variety of sizes, they're lightning fast.

 

How about a seagate drive that is 7200 and has a 2mb cache.....is that slow?

 

Any modern 7200 RPM drive should be very decent, the larger buffer just does a little extra for queuing up writes when the disk is busy, and so increases throughput.

 

Thanks..one last question..is there anyway to identify what kind of ATA my computer is equipped with (like ata 33, ata 100)

 

Cruise over to AIDA32 and download the Enterprise Edition of ADIA32, it'll tell you loads of good stuff about your system.

 

Your experience has helped me a lot..and the advice you got confirms that this hard drive problem is niot unique. I have an e machine with 8.4 gbytes and it "clunks" every few hours, stopping operation...E machines want 59.50 for new one... wonder if I could get one any cheaper elsewhere..and will the cd that e machine supplies to automatically format a drive be useable on any new one?...amnd.if not, will someone on this board be able to walk me through the formatting process?You guys are great techs...really appreciate this site.

Oneoldman...getting older every day!!