How can I remove the "Bad Sector" marker placed by Scandisk?

[wengang]

Hi.<br>You know when a disk gets old and starts falling apart, scandisk will run read-write tests and then mark the sector as &quot;Bad&quot; if one or more clusters fail the test.&nbsp;&nbsp;Of course, so that in the future info will not be lost.<br><br>Please don't ask me why but I need to know if there is a software that will allow me to remove the &quot;Bad Sector&quot; marker from the drive.&nbsp;&nbsp;OR if there is a software that will allow me to place a sector as &quot;Bad&quot; whether it is or not.<br><br>Any ideas?

 

[alvin79]

Hi,<br>Actually, Windows will record bad sector when you run scandisk. You have to reformat your harddisk (use high and low level format) to remove the bad sector because this bad sector may cause by software mistake.

 

[wengang]

Well, thanks, but actually I have found a way to remove the information placed by scandisk.<br><br>You just go to the registry<br>Current User&gt; Software&gt; Microsoft&gt; Windows&gt; Applets&gt; Check Disk&gt;<br>and then change the settings so that the last two digits are

 

[Alt255]

Wengang, you captured our interest. Perhaps you could finish what you were about to say?<br><br>Actually, bad sector markers are stored on hard drives at a very low level and no amount of fiddling with the registry can remove them. I wanted to see what was contained in that branch but it doesn't exist on this computer (I'll check on my work machines). Maybe it is a setting that tells Scandisk to fix the error without reporting it?<br><br>The answer to your second question is no, I believe. I have never heard of a product that would allow you to do this. You could write your own using assembler but, unless you are quite expert and have a lot of spare hard drives to experiment with, I wouldn't recommend it.<br><br>If you want to fool around with interrupt 13, make sure it's on a throw-away drive.<br> <p> <br><a href=mailto: > </a><br><a href=

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