Resize/merge problem

Hello all,

I recently got a new laptop and reformmated it and put on win xp pro (sp3) but did not realize that there was a hidden recovery partition i had overlooked. so now ive been using it for a few weeks and have set it up jus thte way i like but decided to recover the space(6.5gb) from the recovery partition which i deleted. first i tried just adding the unallocated space to the main partition using the resize feature. unfortunately i got an error (unable to process partitions with bad blocks) and so i tried using chkdsk /r with no luck. so then i decided to make a backup image using acronis true image 11 and reformat the entire drive and replace the image on to the drive. all that went fine until the end of the recovery when it gave an error msg about being unable to write to a specific sector on the drive so i clicked ignore. everything still works fine. i still got the same error when trying to resize. so then i tried merging instead where i formatted the unallocated space into a partition and then tried to merge the two bits. it analyzed the small partition fine but then froze while analyzing the main partition. so then i tried all of the above with a boot cd made by disk director. everything happened the same except it rebooted when analyzing the main partition for merging. anyone got any suggestions? i would appreciate any help that doesnt involve me starting from scratch(reinstall the OS and programs etc.).

 

zcubed:

The bad blocks may have been in the area occupied by the recovery partition, so your original chkdsk /r would not have found them. Now that you have removed that partition and are using the entire disk, first thing to try is to run chkdsk /r again to see if the bad sectors can be recovered.

If this scan finds bad sectors on the drive, then see if your drive manufacturer has downloadable drive test software. For example, Seagate has SeaTools, which is a standalone application that can check the drive and scan for and repair bad sectors. After fixing the drive, then restore your TI image to the full disk. After restoring the image you may need to run chkdsk /r again, because if the image was done when there were bad sectors recorded in the bad blocks file then this file is restored with the image and is erroneously reporting bad blocks. Running another chkdsk /r will clear the bad blocks list if there are no actual bad blocks.

If your drive test found lots of bad sectors then you should replace the drive because it will probably only get worse with time. Since it's a new laptop you can hopefully do this under warranty.