Well let me tell ya a story. :) Marking a cluster as bad is done in the fat
table so if you do a format /c (other than with a DDO) that will clear the
bad sectors. Installing the DDO(Maxblast) will do that by default. A word
of caution. if you use ANY utility on the HD make sure that you follow the
proper FLOPPY boot procedure. If you don't you will lose data. What I am
talking about is low level utilities like Norton Utilities. They have
programs that will save your butt unless used improperly. If you use RESCUE
or NDD without booting to the FLOPPY properly. You can wipe out the MBR and
partition tables. What happens is that maxblast puts code in the boot
record that tells the computer how to access the drive. When you use
NDD(when booting from floppy) and don't follow the boot procedure properly.
The repair software doesn't see the drive correctly. Any repairs you make
are going to be improper.

Brian Coe
CM Productions


At 06:45 PM 2/15/98 -0500, you wrote:
>>Xcopy will not create a bad cluster, it can't.  It has no
>>formatting capabilities.  It is merely a duplicator.
>
>
>I decided to low level format the drive. After re-booting only half of the
>drive's capacity was regonzied. This is an older Bios, and does not allow
>for Large or LBA mode. Although, I'm not quite sure what made the BIOS
>recognize the prior size, it no longer regognized the full 1.08 GB.
>
>I think it duplicated the bad data and the new drive marked it as bad
>sectors. I downloaded a program called MaxBlast ( http://www.maxtor.com)
>from Maxtor's Web Site that makes the installation of the drive so much
>smoother. Any way, this program allowed me to partition the drives and have
>them recognized under Windows 3.1 . This is on a 386DX system with 8MB Ram.
>
>I ran scandisk on both partitions and the Bad Sectors that were previously
>marked, are no longer there! It is completely ODD to me as to how this was
>all possible. I though that once a drive had Bad Sectors, it was stuck with
>Bad Sectors!?
>
>
>Guido Piraino
>
>
>          PCBUILD:  http://nospin.com  or  [log in to unmask]
>
>
>


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