Bad Sectors Question

[perplex]

A friend just told me his hard drive is dying and he thinks there are bad sectors, so he was going to do a full format to the drive, and when you do a full format it will see the bad sectors and will hide them so you cant use them, resulting in a smaller hard drive but you will have no bad sectors..

 

so is this true?

 

Ive never heard... and im interested to know now

[Jechu182]

An HDD with bad sectors doesnt necesarily mean it is dying. They are just sectors which cant be read maybe from physical damage or simply OS problems. 

 

Here is a link about Bad Sectors and how to repair them:

 

http://www.auslogics.com/en/articles/bad-sector/

[perplex]

not really the answer i was after but thanks.

 

question is - if i do a full format on a hard drive that has a bad sector, will it hide the bad sector and when i do that scan that bad sector will be gone?

 

also i just did a test on HD tune and i have 1 damaged block, is that something that i can fix or?

 

i did read your bad sectors link, didnt really give me the information i was after

[Jechu182]

If the bad sector is just a software issue then it will be completely fixed. But if its a physical damaged sector (which I doubt because 1 damaged block is almost nothing) then it will not be fixed, but im not sure if it will be hidden or will it stay the same after format...

 

Tell your friend to run chkdsk. Open command prompt and run; chkdsk

 

That sould fix it

[perplex]

it would be interesting if it hides it when you do a format, i need to try it one day