bad sectors/low level format

[ajcstr]

I recently had a Maxtor hard drive report bad sectors (maybe 8). I was not having any problems with the drive - just happened to run a scandisk because I had another hard drive on my laptop fail without warning so now I am being proactive with these things.

I ran Maxtor's low level format utility and now it reports no bad sectors and looks like i have the full capacity of the drive available.

Is the drive good to go, or is this just a temporary fix?

[lucky_chouhan]

low level format is mean your hard disk remain space formated not bad sector. day by day bad sector increasing but if you delete the partition then create you see never any bad sector. because bad sector never removed hard disk or yes this is only increased. so here i my 2 suggetions-

1. never format drive in many time.
2. do not use much more copy and paste data.

it means your hd light is burning minimum.

i hope you can understand.

[harry12]

Not too clear to me reading this reply, sorry Lucky_Chuhan.
FWIW:
I have heard that the Low-level format (ie BIOS Option) is a pathway to messing things up...can someone ( here) explain then, why a BIOS manufacturer would build-in a routine that scuppered a periperal? However, that "tale" makes me wary of ever using the routine - so I stick to conventional "Format" routine (in DOS, I presume).

However, I've run scanDisc and also had a bad ( dunno - small red square- is that a single sector?) - anyway I agreed to fix it and I understood this info goes into a look-up table (to avoid using said bad sector), so when you next format the drive it will appear OK, even though that "bad Secotor" is still there.....mine was replaced by another "spare" sector, even without Format. Running ScanDisk now reports no errors some months later.
If you are asking "Is the Drive OK", the ans is ''Maybe'' - it's fixed for now, but IMHO means your HDD could continue to develop more bad sectors - has it been "banged" - or dropped etc? Any one of these will potentially induce a fault and if the flying-head is damaged then sudden/complete failure is also possible.
My drive is about 6 years old - with one bad sector to show for it - so I say "Use with care" - never store something on an old drive that is "important" - - you risk losing it.
Make a copy (separate HDD drive, or burn a CD etc.), of anything important, just like if it was about to be stolen!
- - - - - - - - - - - - For No-one can tell you if this drive is OK. - - - - - - - - -
((It a "risk thingy" - what level of risk are you prepared to take, make copy-provision depending upon your usage.) A Portable PC is "much" more susceptable to HDD failure IMHO ....be lucky.

[ron999]

na get rid of it and get a new drive before you lose everything