Mark good block as bad!

[Glasgow]

Is there a way in which I can mark a block as bad (irrespective of whether it is or not) so that it will be ignored by Windows. Interested in W2k, XP & NT.

The real root of my question is that I need to know that if for some reason a block does get marked as bad as a result of some error detection process, does it change the total disk space that would be returned by the GetVolumeInformation API call?

Thanks in advance.

 

[jbotz]

Yes, it would affect the Total Disk Space reported. I am not aware of any way to manually specify bad blocks, however.

 

[jbotz]

I should qualify that statement a little better. If the drive was formatted after the bad blocks were marked as such, they could, in fact, be ignored by the OS. Typically, if a block goes bad afterwards, it does not become ignored, but shows up under the bad sector count.

 

[Glasgow]

OK thank you jbotz - if I can't mark a block as bad, can you think of any way I could test that Total Disk Space is reported differently other than running a screwdriver across the disk?

 

[TekTippy4U]

Not sure if this will help,
thread751-691569 it dea;s with the difference the "amount" of disc space windows reports..

TT4U

Notification:
These are just "my" thoughts....and should be carefully measured against other opinions....I try very hard to impart correct info at all times.