Anything possible to fix a hdd with bad sectors at beginning?

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Anything possible to fix a hdd with bad sectors at beginning?

2008-08-06 17:52:22

Hey there,

I've got a 40GB Seagate ST340015A (IDE) which has some bad sectors at the very beginning of the drive. The problem is that they're at the beginning; Windows XP will no longer boot when I install this hdd as secondary hdd into my computer, I guess it tries to read the partition table or something over and over again... If I install it as master drive, the BIOS will hang checking it for a long time, too...
Now I booted DOS and some disk editor and immediately after opening it showed a read error at sector 0... and so it goes on to sector 501 or so... the remaining of the disk seems fine!
I tried Seagate Seatools Long Test, and it showed me the sectors damaged, and asked me to repair them... I clicked Yes but nothing really happened
Is there some way to map out the broken sectors, so that the disk area that the OS (and the BIOS, too, of course) sees begins after the broken sectors? I already had another hdd with bad sectors in the middle of it many years ago, it was somewhat like 6GB, all I did was to partition it so that the area with bad sectors were in unpartitioned space and everything worked fine... But if it's at the beginning, what to do then???
Warranty is over Please don't tell me to buy a new hdd, because that is of no help... I know hdds are cheap, but making this one work again would be for free, because time is not a problem for me!
I guess the replacement sectors of this disk are all in use already, otherwise Seatools should have been able to fix the problems... I could live with a little less space, but how could I get rid of the bad space?
I read a lot about these problems already. All guides say Low-level-format wouldn't be possible with modern drives... I would try about everything to fix it, so don't hesitate to give some risky advises Because the hdd is completely unusable, I can't lose anything, anyway!

Thanks a lot in advance!

Anything possible to fix a hdd with bad sectors at beginning?

Reply #1 – 2008-08-06 18:12:40

You can try mhdd with fasterase/erase function.

Anything possible to fix a hdd with bad sectors at beginning?

Reply #2 – 2008-08-07 15:50:53

Okay, I tried... it killed the hdd completely (i.e. that means that every sector I tried to randomly access on the drive (I tried 30 all over the drive!) now gives an read error). But I think that would have happened in normal usage as well; I think the hdd broke the sectors while writing to them.
Guess it's a clear candidate for experimenting, taking it apart and having a look at how it's internals look

Does anybody have any other idea? It's probably a head crash, isn't it? And that means it can't be repaired, right?

Thanks a lot!

Anything possible to fix a hdd with bad sectors at beginning?

Reply #3 – 2008-08-07 17:42:48

Nowadays repairing only makes sense in data recovery: a failed drive is recovered only to extract valuable data. If you have tried seatools and mhdd, and couldn't quickly repair the drive, throw it away (or recycle - depends on your country).

Anything possible to fix a hdd with bad sectors at beginning?

Reply #4 – 2008-08-07 18:29:50

I had a similar case once. I managed to recover most data using a Win98/DOS boot CD. Spent one day on this task. It was that long only because a stupid person had used special characters in filenames and the file system was NTFS.

It's insanity to attempt to use a broken harddisk. It is suggested everywhere that once there are bad sectors, you should recover as much data as possible and put the disk out of service.

Anything possible to fix a hdd with bad sectors at beginning?

Reply #5 – 2008-08-07 22:51:53

For the next time, try this tool: http://hdat2.com/

Anything possible to fix a hdd with bad sectors at beginning?

Reply #6 – 2008-08-08 09:59:37

Thank you all for helping! CiTay, I'll take a look at the program you suggested.
Yesterday in the late night I unmounted the pcb from the hdd (it were only four screws to remove!). As you can see in the picture below, the contacts to the disk were absolutely oxidated (there are 2 rows of 11 contacts on the upper left, I guess for data and 3 contacts on the bottom, I guess for the drive motor). I cleaned them with some printer paper, so they are now blank again. Then I reinstalled the drive, but still all sectors are bad.
Could it be that sectors became bad because of these bad contacts?? So if I had cleaned them before doing erase in mhdd, no additional sectors would have been broken? The hard drive takes up about 10W, that's nearly 1A at 12V... I wonder how that could properly go through these bad contacts? Could that be the reason why the drive died?
I think these contacts should rather have been soldered to the disk... There's only a pin on each contact and the screws put them together so they should be connected.
If so, maybe a REAL low-level-format could help to bring the platters back in it's old order? But how can such a process be done? Every guide suggests that only manufacturers could nowadays do that, but if they can do that, why should I not be able to do it, too?
Maybe I'm really insane... But I don't like the fact that I'm using technology where all I can do is to throw it away as soon as it breaks

Anything possible to fix a hdd with bad sectors at beginning?

Reply #7 – 2008-08-08 10:49:45

Quote from: gasmann on 2008-08-08 09:59:37

But how can such a process be done? Every guide suggests that only manufacturers could nowadays do that, but if they can do that, why should I not be able to do it, too?

A special hardware is required to perform that low-level operations. You might be interested to discuss the topic on the corresponding dedicated forum:
http://forum.hddguru.com/

Anything possible to fix a hdd with bad sectors at beginning?

Reply #8 – 2008-08-09 11:51:11

Okay, I read something more about low-level-format on modern drives. The hard drive itself can't know where the tracks have to be recreated. The special hardware you mentioned is too expensive, given that there is no warranty it'll work afterwards.
That's it. I have just finally declared this hdd for dead. Maybe I'll open it and take a look at it's inside (I know that's destructive, but it's dead, anyway)...

Thank you all for your kindness and provided help!

Anything possible to fix a hdd with bad sectors at beginning?

Reply #9 – 2008-08-10 17:00:26

I haven't read the whole thread but...

@ gasmann: I've had a similar issue. I fixed it by using Partition Magic. The areas of HD where were the bad sectors I left unused, so no partition was created at those areas. I was very time consuming to locate where are the bad sectors and to create the partitions at the right areas of HD.

Anything possible to fix a hdd with bad sectors at beginning?

Reply #10 – 2008-08-11 19:39:29

I would want to do that, too... BUT: first, the very beginning of the disk was damaged. That means you couldn't put even a partition table on it! Now, all sectors I checked are bad... As I said, they probably broke while writing to them.
It's sad, but it can't be fixed nor walked around with software anymore. Probably there's a head crash (I assume, but given I don't have enough knowledge and tools available, I'm lost with assuming)...

Anything possible to fix a hdd with bad sectors at beginning?

Reply #11 – 2008-08-16 04:09:36

Quote

they probably broke while writing to them.

That's the reason why you shouldn't be using such a damaged drive, if only for "scientific" purposes.

Anything possible to fix a hdd with bad sectors at beginning?

Reply #12 – 2008-08-18 01:21:17

If the drive has bad sectors, it's dying. Don't continue to use it. Just get a new hard drive. You can get a 160 GB for like $40 now.

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