Can drivers cause false "bad block" errors?

[OCdude]

I've recently bought 2 new drives and copied the exact same data to each drive, using the same SATA port and same cable. (As both drives are 3 TB, I've had to update my nForce drivers to the latest version for my motherboard to to view them properly).

Once I'd copied all the data, I checked the MD5 checksums on the second drive and noticed that a couple of large files were corrupted. So I checked the event viewer and there are loads of warnings mentioning bad blocks etc.

I assumed it was a dodgy drive, so i started the RMA procedure. In the meantime, i've fully scanned the drive with CHKDISK and HD Tune, both of which have found NO problems whatsoever.

I've now plugged the 1st drive back in, to check the MD5 checksums on that, and everything is fine, however I still get "bad block" errors...

So now i'm a bit confused and paranoid!

I understand that a bad block is literally a physical area of the disk that can't be read/written to for whatever reason, but can these really be falsely detected and reported by windows, due to crap drivers?

I'm hoping it is the drivers and I can just ignore it... but that still doesn't explain the corrupted data in the second copy.

HALP!

 

[Pilgrim57]

Could it be that the bad block data was on the original drive & got copied to new ? That would explain the new drives passing the test. I maybe wrong.
Change the sata cable/port? Can you open the corrupt files? Can you read the original file or is that corrupt as well, i.e. wasn't corrupted during the transfer.

 

[OCdude]

Definitely nothing wrong with the SATA cable or port, as I use it for another drive and i've never had any issues with that one.

As for the day, i've checked the MD5s on the original files (to confirm they're fine and weren't corrupted before the transfer) and they're fine!