Conference noted::windows95

    Not an answer, but a fellow sufferer. It seems that even if you select
    the option to "Automatically Fix Errors", they aren't, or it doesn't.
    I have the same problem, and, whilst irritating, it hasn't (yet) caused
    any major problems for me. I would like the bad sectors flagged as
    "unuseable", though.
    
    Simon

    re: BIGCHZ::EZZELL
    
    Mike,
    
    Some more advanced disk utilities can map out bad sectors.  Without
    such tools, a high-level reformat of the drive will take care of
    marking the affected clusters as bad and the system and other software
    will no longer use it.
    
    /Bill

When I first got Windows 95 for my laptop, my harddisk at that time had bad
sectors and this caused FORMAT to fail.  I had to get a new harddisk to allow
the FORMAT which was required for the Windows 95 (Workbench 95) install.
Will I be able to FORMAT my disk with bad sectors?

    re: BIGCHZ::EZZELL
    
    I've never encountered bad sectors under Win95 due to newer disks
    (haven't had a chance to go bad yet), but DOS format has been able to
    handle bad sectors before.
    
    /Bill

    >  <<< Note 2849.2 by TARKIN::LIN "Bill Lin" >>>
    
    >  Some more advanced disk utilities can map out bad sectors.  Without
    >  such tools, a high-level reformat of the drive will take care of
    >  marking the affected clusters as bad and the system and other
    >  software will no longer use it.
    
    howcum:
    I did a high level reformat of my hard drive, to get rid of a bad disk
    sector, and now all of my software and system files disappeared. What
    did I do wrong?
    
    *8)

re .3

There are TWO different types of format.

Format.exe is a DOS/Windows utility that lay's down the FILE SYSTEM format, and
yes that will fail with bad disk clusters. Most likely what you saw.

What the previous replies are refering to is a "low level" disk format that lays
down HEADER/DATA/ECC area's on the disk. This can only be run by diagnostics or
built in bios format routines. This is run before FDISK or FORMAT.EXE.

roger.

    Well, I _WAS_ really talking about a high level-format, but .5 brings
    up a good point that may not have been obvious, which is that the
    high-level format will wipe your disk clean of files as well.
    
    /Bill

Yes, I have definitely used a high-level format (DOS "format.exe")
to map out bad sectors that Windows 95 scandisk reported, on two 
occasions - it worked 
for me both times. 

Greg.

Well I've gone and done it now.  I ran FDISK and blew away my partition and
tried to Format from floppy.  Format gets to 7 percent complete, then says:

Not ready
Format terminated.

This is what had happened to me before when I tried to format a disk that had
bad sectors.  Did I misunderstand the previous replys?

    re: .9 by BIGCHZ::EZZELL
    
    Mike,
    
    I think your disk has more serious problems than a few bad blocks.
    Perhaps entire tracks have been shaved off by a head crash.
    
    /Bill

    re:   Perhaps entire tracks have been shaved off by a head crash.
    
    not to make light of the situation, but:
    
    my old college roomie had this problem, and he ran around with a
    buzz cut for a few weeks until the scars healed. 
    
    that sure taught him not to cruise down Capital Hill to Univ. of
    Washington in the rain on a bicycle w/out brakes...
     
    as t'were..
    
    .bob

    re: .9 by BIGCHZ::EZZELL
    
    Mike,
    
    Next step for you, I think, is to contact the disk vendor to see if
    there is any way an end-user such as you can low-level format the
    drive.  I don't think many IDE users low-level format their drives.
    It's more common amongst SCSI users.
    
    /Bill

I've got it all packed up and ready to send to the Digital Repair Center.
I just wanted to make sure that I hadn't misunderstood the previous discussion.
Thanks for the suggestions.

Low-level format programs are usually found on the website of the
manufactures, IDE drives included.

    Following this line... I'm almost "sure" that I have some bad
    clusters...
    
    Run SCANDISK, no problems found
    Run DEFRAG, serious problems found:
    	use HELP instructions and 
    	run SANDISK with "thorough" mode
    Run SCANDISK with "thorough" mode enabled, no problems found
    Run DEFRAG, serious problems found:...
    
    I'm pretty sure I've got some bad clusters at the end of my C
    partition.  Just point me to the tools that help me fix it.  I have an
    Old Norton V8.0, with Disk Doctor, but think it wise to not use it...
    
    And the product of choice is....
    
    jff

    I also had the "infinite loop" problem. Do you use
    Dblspace? If so then it's probably the same problem.
    
    I finally fixed it buying Stacker for Windows 95
    which was able to fix the disk before replacing
    the Dblspace with the Stacker equivalent, also
    got me even more disk space than Dblspace.
    
    /Piotr
    

    I use dblspace, but not on this particular partition:
    1.3GB partioned as  C: 400, D: 400 E:400&doublespaced
    
    My problem is on "C"..., native drive, first partition... maybe some
    Norton tools or such....
    jff

    Hi,
    
    my opinion of Scandisk (it was DOS 6.22) went down an aweful lot
    recently. My Father in Law's old machine (XT clone) was having HDD
    problems - ran Scandisk - no errors found, even in 'thorough' mode.
    
    Fine, thinks I. I'll do a backup anyway, so I used PKZIP and spanned
    across the disks (360K :') for the backup - got so many unreadable
    files!!! He's now on a newer machine with a much newer IDE drive, yadda
    yadda yadda, but the point is, SCANDISK just doesn't hack it!
    
    H

    
    I hate scandisk doing all these restarts. I was having trouble recently
    when a QLogic PCI SCSI went south and then wouldn't boot my disk. I
    swapped boards (from 1040A to 1020A) and it would kinda work with one
    disk on it, then with 2 it went south. I replaced the 1020A with a
    1040B and system came up like a champ! I don't trust these particular
    1020A card(s) I tried. Now I have 2Gb wide, 1Gb narrow and Python DAT
    connected via wide ribbon with 68->50 adapters for the 1Gb and Python
    and it has been smooth since I got it running again last night. But
    back to the 1020A board and scandisk. I ran it starting wed. night at
    about 5:15 pm and it was still going after 10:30 that night! On the 2Gb
    wide.....it had the window about restarting 10 times already which I
    said not to show again....I was in SAFE mode to boot! Go figure! Now
    with the 1040B board it she flies along nicely and I didn't lose the
    data I had on the 1Gb (original boot disk which didn't work after the
    first 1040A went down so I thought I lost it)! So now to put the old
    540Mb Conner to the bus and see if I have all 3.5Gb space! I will also
    make a complete backup of all the disks between tonight and tomorrow
    JUST in case! ;-)