Bad Block error?

Serendipity
Serendipity Posts: 6,975
edited August 2009 in The Clubhouse
My laptop recently has been giving me an error message:

"Device HardDisk0\ has a bad block". Is there anything I can do to recover the data?
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  • wizzy
    wizzy Posts: 867
    edited August 2009
    Probably not, but you should be shitting your pants if you don't have backups at this time.

    If not you need to back your stuff up asap as your hard drive might be in the process of nosediving.

    If you're lucky it's just a bad block, those do come along. After you backup, download the appropriate HD checking diag bootable CD from your hard drive manufacturer and do a non-destructive low level scan of your drive.

    W
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  • Serendipity
    Serendipity Posts: 6,975
    edited August 2009
    I don't have recent backups yet, but I did back up the entire drive before the end of last semester.
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  • wizzy
    wizzy Posts: 867
    edited August 2009
    Go ahead and run through your stuff and get anything you think is important backed up to a memory stick or CD or something just in case.

    What make/model is the hard drive? How old?
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  • Serendipity
    Serendipity Posts: 6,975
    edited August 2009
    The hard drive is a Fujitsu laptop drive, and it's a few years old (from around 2005 I think).

    How do I read the files in "My Documents" that trigger the bad block?
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  • Kex
    Kex Posts: 5,200
    edited August 2009
    appadv wrote: »
    My laptop recently has been giving me an error message:

    "Device HardDisk0\ has a bad block". Is there anything I can do to recover the data?
    For hard drive issues, this software may well be the very best available to the general public:

    http://www.grc.com/intro.htm

    It's a very small download, for about $90, with a thirty day trial period. I used it successfully with a damaged hard drive in a laptop that was dropped by accident when shutting down. It's a long story, but after all sorts of BSOD errors, before using the product, I not only got Windows rebooted after using the product, but I was able to copy all the data I needed off it.

    You need to copy it onto a floppy drive, or CD (if your laptop BIOS accepts booting from a CD) and then it starts running before the O.S. Recovery only takes a few hours on a reasonably healthy drive, a few days on a damaged drive, or a few weeks for a severly damaged drive. It can, however, work miracles (and it did for me). It actually reads every single byte on the disk, and attempts to repair any damaged sections.

    I could tell you a ton more information about this, if you need it, so you can e-mail me if you want to know more. Otherwise, if you decide to try it, just put your laptop somewhere safe from bumps or knocks, and out of direct sunlight (for heat issues) and leave it to run it's course, however long that may be. If the damage is not severe, I would expect your chances of success are probably in the region of 95%. If it doesn't work, you can ask for a refund within the trial period.

    Good luck!
    Alea jacta est!
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  • Serendipity
    Serendipity Posts: 6,975
    edited August 2009
    I'm trying to copy the files off the disk right now.
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  • AudioGenics
    AudioGenics Posts: 2,567
    edited August 2009
    having one of those days.... been there too
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  • wallstreet
    wallstreet Posts: 1,405
    edited August 2009
    Just run chkdsk /f from a dos prompt to fix the errors (or mark them unusable).
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  • Serendipity
    Serendipity Posts: 6,975
    edited August 2009
    wallstreet wrote: »
    Just run chkdsk /f from a dos prompt to fix the errors (or mark them unusable).

    They (the errors) seem to come back. What's up with that?
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  • Kex
    Kex Posts: 5,200
    edited August 2009
    Appadv, FWIW, I also tried chkdsk /f on the hard drive I was attempting to recover data from. It would run for a while, apparently detecting errors, and then just hang and freeze. I mention it since you seem to be having continuing issues, and it might be useful for you to know that SpinRite was able to repair a drive that was so badly damaged that nothing else would work, and repair it sufficiently to actually boot Windows successfully so that copying data was a simple matter of drag and drop. Also worthy of mention is that, after using it, you will have a good idea of just how bad the drive is, in terms of corrected errors, errors that were found but could not be corrected (if any), bad sectors (if any), sectors never found (if any), etc ...

    I know that getting something done for free always seems tempting, but I would suggest that, at this point, you consider what data you might loose on that drive, if things get worse. If the drive has sustained physical damage, it will start getting worse IMO, the more you try to repair it.
    Alea jacta est!
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  • Kex
    Kex Posts: 5,200
    edited August 2009
    Myself and others have also had some success with data recovery (not disk repair) using this free software, PC Inspector:

    http://www.pcinspector.de/Sites/file_recovery/info.htm?language=1
    Alea jacta est!
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  • Serendipity
    Serendipity Posts: 6,975
    edited August 2009
    Kex wrote: »
    Appadv, FWIW, I also tried chkdsk /f on the hard drive I was attempting to recover data from. It would run for a while, apparently detecting errors, and then just hang and freeze. I mention it since you seem to be having continuing issues, and it might be useful for you to know that SpinRite was able to repair a drive that was so badly damaged that nothing else would work, and repair it sufficiently to actually boot Windows successfully so that copying data was a simple matter of drag and drop. Also worthy of mention is that, after using it, you will have a good idea of just how bad the drive is, in terms of corrected errors, errors that were found but could not be corrected (if any), bad sectors (if any), sectors never found (if any), etc ...

    I know that getting something done for free always seems tempting, but I would suggest that, at this point, you consider what data you might loose on that drive, if things get worse. If the drive has sustained physical damage, it will start getting worse IMO, the more you try to repair it.

    Forget about it... I'm having a bad day today.

    What ELSE could go wrong in a day? (Car problems, basement pipe leaking, hard drive failure)

    Hmm...
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  • Kex
    Kex Posts: 5,200
    edited August 2009
    appadv wrote: »
    Forget about it... I'm having a bad day today. ...
    LOL! Okay, it sounds like you're having an especially horrible Monday, so I'll send some good thoughts your way, hoping things start to look brighter.
    Alea jacta est!
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  • nebborjk
    nebborjk Posts: 425
    edited August 2009
    appadv wrote: »
    What ELSE could go wrong in a day? (Car problems, basement pipe leaking, hard drive failure)

    Look at the bright side at least your audio gear is o.k.
    Proud SOPA Member since 2005!
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  • Serendipity
    Serendipity Posts: 6,975
    edited August 2009
    Kex wrote: »
    LOL! Okay, it sounds like you're having an especially horrible Monday, so I'll send some good thoughts your way, hoping things start to look brighter.

    $500 in car repairs last week and now $700+ today - then $399 or so for a new laptop...

    I need a second job.
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  • Kex
    Kex Posts: 5,200
    edited August 2009
    appadv wrote: »
    $500 in car repairs last week and now $700+ today - then $399 or so for a new laptop...

    I need a second job.
    Appadv, even if the hard drive is toast, and you won't know for sure without something like SpinRite IMO, they are usually a lot cheaper than you might think to replace. In my laptop, the price was less than $50, and I tripled the capacity compared to the original bad drive, so I got my laptop back, working better than before. Installing everything from scratch was a tedious task, of course.
    Alea jacta est!
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  • Sami
    Sami Posts: 4,634
    edited August 2009
    Kex wrote: »
    Installing everything from scratch was a tedious task, of course.

    You can do a bit-for-bit copies of your existing drive.

    Here's one free tool: http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/

    Or just boot up a live CD and copy the drive with dd:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dd_(Unix)
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