[elec999]

I have a 60gig toshiba laptop hard drive. The 60gig drive is got tons of bad sectors. It appears that first 1-2gig are fine, then 10-20gigs are bad, and the last 20-25gigs a fine.Any way at all I can fix this drive. The head also appears to crash if it hits so sectors.
Thanks

[LED ZEPPELIN]

I have a bad sector on my hitachi 30gb laptop drive but it works fine. I think it's fine to have a few but a lot is bad. Sounds like the head is getting stuck on some sectors trying to read. You could write 0's to the drive but that will only temporarily solve the problem as new ones will develop as it seems your drive is headed for hard drive heaven. I'd RMA and backup data ASAP.

[elec999]

Toshiba doesnt want to rma just the drive. They want the whole laptop. I dont feel to confy taking my laptop into a trash can looking store, that works for toshiba repairs.

[uart]

Quote

It appears that first 1-2gig are fine, then 10-20gigs are bad, and the last 20-25gigs a fine.Any way at all I can fix this drive. The head also appears to crash if it hits so sectors.

That drive needs to be replaced urgently. Do it how you will, but get it replaced and get any important data off it now!

[stuppid]

some bad sectors can be fixed. I have one 9G 10k DMVS IBM SCSI which developed a few bad sectors. SMART Test failed. I 'nuke' it(wipe disk operation). SMART Test Passed. I have another seagate st380001a 80G 7200 IDE which behaves the same. I emailed seagate, and got a response from them stating that the drive DOESNT need to be RMA now that SMART test is passed.

Try Zero wipe your hdd as Led Zeppelin suggested since you dont want to send the whole notebook to toshiba. Zero wipe can fix if ur hdd is healthy, but it has the risk of masking some serious hardware problem.

try "Boot and Nuke" its free. backup ur data 1st.

[elec999]

Ill try out the Dariks boot and Nuke, just burnt the iso. Hopefully, the disk will be fixed. My laptop is mostly home use, no actual data. So ive got so scared, and right away, forgot about the data, was more inportant to fix the drive.

[elec999]

I have started the program. Look good so far, hope it works and fixes my problem. Its going really slow its at 2.48% and 1hour passed. Well here is the thing, at about 2.10% the hard drive started clicking, ticking, beeps sounds were coming from the laptop. At about 2.48% it stopped. Is this supposed to be good news. Did it come over the bad sectors and fixed them. When its completed, how can I check if the bad sectors are gone, in a fast way. Also on estimate, how long should it take, remembering the hard drive is a laptop at 4200rpm I believe, and a 60gig.

[Kazrath]

If sucsessful the sectors will be marked as "bad" and will not be usable. This will effect the overall size of your disk.

I agree with some of the previous posts. This drive really needs to be replaced. A few bad sectors is normal. When you have a major sector failure as you have indicated generally the drive is on the way to the trash bin.

I've found it better to be proactive with computer issues so they don't bite you in the rump when you don't want it to happen. And computers always seem to fail when you need them most.

[elec999]

The progress finished after 50hours. I have tried to install windows xp, when I am formatting the drive it still shows 60gig 57224 formatted like before. When I do a full ntfs format, it stays at 4% for ever. Is there anything else I could try.
Thanks

[MaxBurn]

Spinrite 5 will give you a good visual indication of what is going on with the drive. Unfortunately it's not fast and will probabbly take a day or so. It only works with fat32 so you will have to format the drive. Just do a quick format as you will be using spinrite to check the drive later.

Personally I would stop wasting time with it and RMA it. See if you can get an advanced replacement.