Can a Zero-Fill actually repair a drive?

Dr_Evil · 26 Jan 2006 at 11:37

Hey all,

i read somewhere a guy collected HD's that were unwanted due to 'bad sectors' etc. Then he would run a Zero-fill utility that would low-level format the drive and place '0'-s on all sectors. This would actually get rid of any bad sectors, and the drive would become usable again....

Is this true?

I have a Seagate Barracuda that i've been experiencing a lot of bad sectors (crc-errors in ntfs-files, delayed-write failed errors, also sometimes the drive disappearing in windows) and i have reformatted twice now, but these problems keep re-appearing.

I've downloaded a manufacturer's utility to "Zero-Fill" the drive (Seagate DiskWizard Starter Edition, 2 floppy disks) but when i choose that option from the utilities menu and select the drive, the program "hangs" on 0%.

it recognizes the drive as "BIOS - ST380013AS" (or something like that)

any ideas? many thanks.

Lemonzest · 26 Jan 2006 at 13:36

it can get rid of some, because it allows the drive to remap bad sectors. cant remove all tho due to the limited amount in the remapping table

basmic · 26 Jan 2006 at 14:07

Zero fill the drive, and run Spinrite on it.

Might take a good day for Spinrite to complete, but it certainly does a good job.

Dr_Evil · 26 Jan 2006 at 14:25

so, does the "zero-fill" process mark bad sectors as 'unusable' on the drive, or does it actually fix them?

any ideas why DiskWizard hangs on 0% when trying to zero-fill the drive?

Spinrite - does that actually run in windows or dos?

ed3203 · 26 Jan 2006 at 19:32

spin write is a dos utility you can put it to usb pen floppy or cd iso, i never let it run as long as it would have liked. HDD regenerator wasn't bad, claimmed to fix bad sectors but i got bored after the first 4 gig, the hdd worked afterwards for a while tho. I've had many a problem including a Laxtor drive and random figured theres loads of things you can do, no idea how much each contributes tho.
hope that helps

basmic · 26 Jan 2006 at 20:36

Dr_Evil said:
so, does the "zero-fill" process mark bad sectors as 'unusable' on the drive, or does it actually fix them?

any ideas why DiskWizard hangs on 0% when trying to zero-fill the drive?

Spinrite - does that actually run in windows or dos?

To be perfectly honest, I can't really see a zero-fill do that much.

I can only think that a bad sector is easier to fix when it doesn't have data, thus increasing the chances of repair when you run HD repair software.

In all honesty, I'd still be very weary of any HD which has had a bad sector. It's developed for a reason, after all.

Dr_Evil · 28 Jan 2006 at 17:18

The drive was fine until I upgraded from 350 to a 400W PSU, both good quality. Everything is connected the same, but for some reasons that Seagate Barracuda started to develop "CRC errors" on larger files stored, then sometimes I would get the "Delayed write failed" error in windows, after which the drive disappeared from the system until the PC was powered down and started up again....

I'm not sure if i can trust that drive now, i'm running some zero-fill utility at the moment thinking it might help, but i'm just wondering how a drive that worked perfectly for over 6 months can suddenly develop bad sectors?

any suggestions welcome.