How to Clear bad sector info in the MFT or ?

I am getting nearly 110GB of bad sectors on my WD 250G IDE HD (see attachment). This happened during one of the following but I don’t know which:

1. When I installed XP SP3 on my Sony Desktop and had to rebuild the boot.ini file after receiving a missing or corrupt hal.dll file during reboot. I used an XP disk and through the recovery console rebuilt the boot.ini file and thought all was well.

2. I downloaded a copy of the Windows XP Recovery Disk from one of the posts recently on NBR and though it would be a good disk to have in my collection. I ran Chkdsk /R from the Recovery Console for no reason but just to do it and see how it performed.

I did both of these within the last two weeks. I didn’t realize there were any bad sector issues with my HD until I started to make my monthly HD image with Acronis True Image. That is when I noticed that the used file space had grown by 110GB.

Running Chkdsk /R, Chkdsk /F, or Volume Error Checking from the HD tools (including scandisk) does not correct the problem. I have also run the Chkdsk /F routine from the XP recovery concole disk with no luck.

WD’s diagnostic program shows no problems with the drive and SMART printouts also don’t show any problems. I am sure that is a software problem caused by item 1 or 2 above and not a true HD problem. I tried to use a Seagate Tools disk but it would not recognize my drive. I also tried a HDD Regenerator program.

I had already cleaned all of my previous restore points so I cannot go back to an earlier time. Also the latest Acronis Image is with the HD in its current condition (the Image is 31GB). Everything works as it should, the only issue is that I have lost 110GB of HD space with 84GB free.

Any suggestions other than a Reformat of the HD and reinstall the Image (and I am not sure if the old MFT gets reinstalled and would again show the bad sector info). Can I somehow clean the MFT of bad sector data if I am sure my HD is not damaged?

This is certainly a new issue for me.

 

110 GB OF BAD SECTORS!!!! Holy crap.

Neither rebuilding the boot,ini or running chkdsk /r is going to "create" a bad problem where none exists. Chkdsk /r WILL mark areas on disks it cannot read as "bad"

Going from 0 to 116gb is...quite surprising

There are only two methods of getting rid of falsely marked bad sectors that I am aware of.

The first is to image the drive using the most recent Norton Ghost with the SKIP BAD SECTORS setting. Then delete all partitions on the drive, then restore the image to the drive and expand the now small partition to fill the drive.

The other option is to use the new switch on VISTA's chkdsk -- /B

Take the drive and insert it into a different computer running VISTA (maybe windows 7, too--haven't checked) and run chkdsk on that drive. You should also be able to use a VISTA DVD or VISTA RECOVERY DISK and use the COMMAND PROMPT option to enter chkdsk /b

Be aware this will take a LONG TIME to evaluation that many sectors...I mean a LONG TIME

 

I just worked on a desktop with this problem.

Windows XP RTM only supported hard drives up to 132GB. My father-in-law had installed a 250GB hard drive, but only the first 132GB was accessible.

First, you MUST upgrade to XP SP1 or better.

I had to use a special Linux boot CD with a tool that would allow me to delete the $BAD file (a special NTFS file that holds a list of bad sectors).

I used SystemRescueCD.

After booting the CD, follow the instructions from this site:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...fs-bad-sectors-list-with-ntfstruncate-492114/

Good luck!

 

gerryf19, thank you

After spending hours googling for a solution and running chkdsk upteen times your solution resolved my problem.

Not having a VISTA DVD I decided to try and boot to a "Vista 32-bit Anytime Disk" I had made long ago.

The "Anytime Disk" worked and going through various menu's I eventually made it to a COMMAND PROMPT. I was able to run the chkdsk /b command and within 15 minutes I saw a message to the effect of "27,xxx,xxx" clusters removed from the bad cluster list. It took 2 - 4 hours to completely finish (I left and had a latte so I don't know exactly how long it took).

My problem is solved thanks to you. Rep is in order

Chkdsk run now looks like this:

 

GREAT NEWS! I remain curious as to what marked it bad....I've run windows xp chkdsk commands on Vista volumes before and never seen that happen.

Anyway, I agree....116mb of bad sectors was clearly a sign of something amiss.

 

I had /have a similar issue recently with frequent "corrupt and unreadable $mft" messages. Only thing which worked was to do recover from over a week ago with Acronis. When I check back to see the cause----XP SP3.
I will start a new thread on this.
Cheers,
Muzz