Win XP scan disk

Soldato
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I have an external hdd that has some bad sectors on it I think. The windows based scan disk fails 20% through and doesn't fix anything. What's the best way to go about getting these bad sectors sorted? Do I need to do something in DOS or safe mode?

Thanks :)
 
If the disk issues are so serious that a scan fails then I'm afraid it usually looks pretty grim for the drive and the data.

Long experience with these sorts of issues have led me to three conclusions:

1. Throw the drive in the bin and restore your data from a backup

2. Send the drive to a specialist becuuse you forgot to do your backup

3. Experiement in the lab with it and try an identical logic board from an identical drive to see if that cures the problem.

I'd be quite pessimistic about getting anything from it unless you can afford a specialist like Kroll.
 
Normally I would suggest Safe Mode but seeing as its an external HDD Windows won't be booting off it so Safe Mode would do nothing in this case.

Can you format it? That may sort the bad sectors but you'll lose any data on there.
 
The data is backed up that's no problem. I've formatted the drive and attempted to scan after that, it failed.

Surely I can tell it not to use the bad sectors but most of the drive is still ok?
 
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