Mark bad block in HDD

[Mike]

Hi all,

I want suggestions about a program that allows me to "mark" bad blocks in a
hard disk (like Norton Disk Doctor in the PC world) in order to avoid using
them for files.
I've found some programs that create a dummy file "using" the bad blocks,
but I don't know how to mark this file as unmovable during an optimization
(if it's even possible).
Any suggestions are welcome.
Thank you in advance!
Kind regards,

Mike

[Thomas Richter]

Hi,

Post by Mike
I want suggestions about a program that allows me to "mark" bad blocks in a
hard disk (like Norton Disk Doctor in the PC world) in order to avoid using
them for files.
I've found some programs that create a dummy file "using" the bad blocks,
but I don't know how to mark this file as unmovable during an optimization
(if it's even possible).
Any suggestions are welcome.

SCSI or IDE drive? As for SCSI, there are a couple of SCSI-2 commands that
map out bad blocks....

However: A SCSI drive is able to do this procedure automatically as it finds
bad blocks. It then remaps them to working ones as soon as it depects them,
unless, however, it is out of spare sectors. If that happens, the drive is
near the end of its lifetime. Thus, instead of playing with bad sectors, I
would *highly* recommend to replace the drive since a *visible* bad block
indicates that something's highly wrong with it.

So long,
Thomas

[Mike]

Post by Thomas Richter
SCSI or IDE drive? As for SCSI, there are a couple of SCSI-2 commands
that map out bad blocks....
However: A SCSI drive is able to do this procedure automatically as it
finds bad blocks. It then remaps them to working ones as soon as it
depects them, unless, however, it is out of spare sectors. If that
happens, the drive is near the end of its lifetime. Thus, instead of
playing with bad sectors, I would *highly* recommend to replace the
drive since a *visible* bad block indicates that something's highly
wrong with it.

Thanks Thomas and Orange for your comments.

I've both an IDE and a SCSI drives, both with errors.
Yesterday I ran Quarterback on the IDE drive, and I found 41 bad sectors in
2GB, so it's not that bad.
Quarterback maps them to a file names bad.blocks or something similar, so I
suppose that Quarterback won't move it if I try to optimize.
I wonder if there's such a tool like Quarterback for SFS, or if Quarterback
can be used on SFS drives...
Regarding the SCSI one, I'll run Quarterback on it as well, but I already
started looking for a new SCSI drive.
Cheers,

[Orange]

Post by Mike
Hi all,
I want suggestions about a program that allows me to "mark" bad blocks in a
hard disk (like Norton Disk Doctor in the PC world) in order to avoid using
them for files.
I've found some programs that create a dummy file "using" the bad blocks,
but I don't know how to mark this file as unmovable during an optimization
(if it's even possible).
Any suggestions are welcome.
Thank you in advance!
Kind regards,
Mike

I know that quarterback tools marks them with a file. Optimizing it
with quarterback tools shouldnt move them . (or does it?)
How about marking them on PC? Hmmm, that probably goes away with
partitioning or formatting?

I would buy new HDD, that is safest. You don't need large one with
Amiga.

Best optin for marking bad blocks would be to "confine" them in
seperate partition only for them.

But really new disk is cheap, much cheaper than losing (all) data.