Bad sector

I'm not having any success with Disk Director on my Vista machine (using the latest DD update).
I need to increase the size of a partition. I receive the message "cannot write to bad sector" and the process aborts. Chkdsk confirms that one partition has a 4k bad sector.
I am not able to "fix" this. Running chkdsk /f gets me a message that the volume must be dismounted in order to attempt a fix. The process completes but the bad sector remains.

In addition, the boot disk will only boot in safe mode. My hardware is definitely not new.

Another, but less important item for now at least, is my attempt to merge two partitions. This time I receive a long list of files and applications that will be affected, and possibly damaged.

My intro to DD has been a great dissapiontment so far since it is unable to do anything I've asked.

Peter

 

DD generally avoids making changes on partitions with bad sectors as it may result in data loss.

You need to run chkdsk /r on all the partitions to check the entire drive. Windows will have to reboot to do this for the Windows partition.

This only marks the areas as "bad" so that they don't get used. You can't get rid of bad sectors because you can't repair the bad area of the disk.

Do you have a current backup image of the drive (or copies of your important files saved elsewhere)?

It sounds like your hard drive may need to be replaced. If a lot of new bad sectors show up in the chkdsk /r scan, then that's what I would recommend. Once they start appearing, they usually continue and the system won't be stable if bad sectors keep showing up.

What formats are the two partitions you're trying to merge?
What is your current disk layout (partition structure)?

 

Thanks for the reply.

There is one 4k bad sector on one of three partitions.

I have a backup of my data but not an image - my version of True Image is not Vista compatible.

When I run chkdsk /f, there is a message that the volume must be demounted and that the problem Might be fixed. However, the bad sector remains. (Now that I think about it, there never was a reboot but the error is not on the Vista partition.)

The partitions are all NTFS and were originally set up using Partition Magic.

What do you mean by partition structure?

Peter

 

The partition layout (structure) as shown by Windows Disk Management.

If you run chkdsk /r on the partition in question from a Command Prompt and a reboot is required, the chkdsk will be run the next time the computer is rebooted. So just reboot and let the scan run. It may take a while if the partition is large as it scans every sector and not just the "used" ones.

What version of TI do you have? If it's 9, you should be able to create an Entire Disk Image from the TI CD (8 may work too).