Demetri:
How can bad clusters be normal?

My understanding of hardrives is that bad clusters means that there is space that magnetically won't record information--hence it's marked bad and that section is bypassed and the info is writen to the next cluster.

The hard drive is usable but it is defective and it capacity is reduced by the amount of space that is unusable.

However, you can opt to keep using it,(hoping you will not lose more clusters)or you can replace it. But, if you have important files, than be aware that you chance losing important information.  The hard drive is dying.

I have hardrives that are over 4 years old, with bad clusters, but I don't use them for important information nor are they my master Harddrive.

Right now, I have a 15 gig drive with 10 bad clusters that I'm returning under warranty for a replacement. If it were not under warrenty, I'd keep using it, but knowing that I'd be taking a chance of sudden blue screens with no explanation.

So--does "bad" mean "bad" or am I missing something?--Mike Michel
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Fri 02/07, Demetri Kolokotronis wrote: Re: Boot problem
"You do not state extent of bad clusters; some bad clusters is normal."

the original message--6 Feb 2003 from "Gregory A. Moyer":
> Thanks all for the help, scandisk is reporting bad clusters, the
> drive is 3 years old.
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