i recently did a chkdsk on a formatted partition and got these results:

Checking file system on D:
Volume label is Storage.
Cleaning up minor inconsistencies on the drive.
Cleaning up 1 unused index entries from index $SII of file 0x9.
Cleaning up 1 unused index entries from index $SDH of file 0x9.
Cleaning up 1 unused security descriptors.
CHKDSK is verifying file data (stage 4 of 5)...
File data verification completed.
CHKDSK is verifying free space (stage 5 of 5)...
Free space verification is complete.
Adding 27492954 bad clusters to the Bad Clusters File.
Correcting errors in the Volume Bitmap.
Windows has made corrections to the file system.

208354985 KB total disk space.
253496 KB in 95 files.
64 KB in 31 indexes.
109971816 KB in bad sectors.
72473 KB in use by the system.
65536 KB occupied by the log file.
98057136 KB available on disk.

4096 bytes in each allocation unit.
52088746 total allocation units on disk.
24514284 allocation units available on disk.


now that the system knows that 100gb is bad will it keep them bad and just not use them? i guess when i have reformatted th hd before it did not know they were bad, eg each time i reformat the drive it has to check with sectors are bad again?? so will the drive be ok to use now? or will more secotrs keep going bad? eg it will deterioate.......... is this partition (i have two, one 200gb for storage, the other 35 gb for system - windows) useable? how stable will it be?

does anyone know if its possible to fix a bad sector - thus making my Western digital HD useable again, and a 250 gb not 150 gb (i heard of a program called HD regenerator that can actaully fix a HD? how is software capable of doing this!!?)

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HOOD

In my experience, once a cluster is marked "bad", that's it. It could go bad for various reasons, but if the system determines it can't use it, I wouldn't try to correct it.

HD's will fail over time as the magnetic coating "fades", leading to bad clusters, but that usually takes many years. Of course, physical damage, dust, et al. can cause the clusters to go bad. Sometimes it's a QA issue from the manufacturer so you might contact Western Digital about it; it may be covered by warranty.

Personally, I wouldn't worry to much about it. Just monitor it and see if it continues to get worse. HD's are getting so cheap that they're nearly disposable now, so you might consider getting a new one.

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Common Sense v2.0-Striving to make the world a little bit smarter.

Although I agree that sometime it can take a long time to lose a HD to bad sectors but that will really depend on how long you have had the HD. But I would say that if you have had that HD for years then you may be ok but if it been a year or less I would replace it as soon as you can. That is a lot of bad sectors and more often than not bad sectors are the signs of a drive on it way out.

Now if you don't have anything important on that drive then there no problem in using it until it dies. But it you continue to use that drive I would strongly suggest that you back that thing up often.

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