Hard Drives

I am curious if such a program exists... I guess I will explain what it should do, since I don't know what to call it.

Basically, this program would do the same things as scandisk, check for errors, correct them, and show the pretty "B" for bad sectors, like in the older versions. The only difference is, it shows the hard drive with a 3D display, showing each platter, where the damage is, each track, cylinder, everything. In other words, map out the entire drive's structure into a virtual display.

The goals of this are to see "where" the damage would be, and also to see if it has some sort of pattern.

Another feature that would be prefered, would be one that allows you to make a partition, but avoid the "region" of sectors that are damaged, thus having a whole drive partitioned normally, except for the "scratched" part of the platter.

I know these programs exist, and I cannot think of the names for them. I know of ones that map out how big files in comparison to others, like Space Monger, but that is only showing data sizes, and not sectors, nor the physical information.

If anyone has some sort of clue as to what this program could be called or could point me in the right direction, that would be awesome.

>>1
Hard to do. BIOSes virtualize cylinders, heads, etc., and hard drives further virtualize whatever BIOSes think they're doing.

What if the user ENTERED in the cylinders and all of the other information? Could a simulation then be displayed?

>>3
No.  There is no simple way to map a given sector number to a physical on the hard drive.  First, some hard drives store their firmware on the disk.  Since you don't know the size of this firmware, you can't tell how big it is.  Then there are spare sectors.  When the drive encounters a bad sector, it internally marks it as bad and uses a spare sector.  However, since the sector is still the same number, the host computer is none the wiser that a swap has been made.  Also take into account there is no easy way to automatically tell how many platters/heads a drive has.  As >>2 says, the BIOS CHS parameters are completely useless due to OS/BIOS/HD firmware virtualization.

If your drive has suddenly developed a bunch of sectors without apparent cause, trash it.  If you dropped it or otherwise exposed it to physical trauma, then don't worry about it, but avoid the bad sectors during partitioning.  No way to tell where it is on the disk though.

>>2
Is right. Long gone is the day of when your computer has a real phisical map of hard drive geometry. A drives firmware changes and optimizes this crap on the fly. Bad sectors are automatically mapped to pre allocated spare ones, things are reordered and optimzied, etc.

In fact, if your operating system ever reports bad sectors on a modern hard drive. GET THE DATA OFF OF IT NOW. It means the drive is fucked, and it will only get worse before failing alltogether.

I have a PENTIUM, 586 motherboard that I have been fucking with... that's why I am curious. I know the older drives don't have all that fancy shit, so I want to see what my 421MB Seagate drive looks like. ^_^

>>6
1 bad sector = 1 drive you throw away

Unless you love losing your data.

lol spinrite?

>>7
Not necessarily.  If you dropped the drive, then you can still use it.  You'll have bad sectors, but it's from physical damange and not the drive electronics going out.

>>9
I never drop them (if I did I'd punch myself several times until I fall unconscious), but either way I can't trust a drive with regular read errors, exhausted spare space, etc.; I throw them away the second I hear one crackle, see one bad sector from software, etc. It's because my data is worth like $15000 to me. A hard disk is worth like $150. I can buy a new hard disk, but I can't get my feet, dickgirls and pissing hentai collection back so easily.

>>10

Protip for the future: never, ever use an external USB enclosure.  They will render you insane in a matter of seconds.

>>11
Not much of a tip, pro.

>>12
Yes it is, also, it's a good one.

>>9
I wouldn't trust a hard drive with bad sectors with any important data.  I would trust it to host an easily replaceable operating system and applications.  Better to not store data on such a drive though.

Example: I have an old computer here hooked up to my 42" LCD screen.  I'm running Windows and Opera off of a 4GB Maxtor that sustained some sort of physical damage.  Fails SMART test.  But I haven't seen an increase in remapped sectors since I've been using it. 

Now I'm not going to save anything important on this drive, but it serves it's purpose for getting the Internet downstairs here.