09 Feb 2003, 16:32, JIM HOLSONBACK (1:123/140), wrote to WAYNE CHIRNSIDE:

Hi JIM.  Hello Wayne also.

 WC>> Appears some 300 meg of the drive is mapped bad which I
 WC>> attribute to it coming from a household with kids and thus
 WC>> it's likely been bumped when running though fortunately the
 WC>> boot sector appears undamaged

 JH> OUCH! That's a lot of bad clusters.  I think the HDD is likely on 
 JH> its way out.  Might be a good idea to wait a little before looking 
 JH> for more DIMMS, as this one may be needing a HDD soon.

 JH> One way you could do some more checking on it would be to run 
 JH> Scandisk a few more times.  If more bad clusters keep showing up, that 
 JH> is a bad sign.

And if I may add...  IF Scandisk does NOT find additional bad sectors, the
ones marked as "bad" _may_ have been due to illegal FAT entries,
ie: pointing to sectors that do not exist on the drive.  The "factory
program" for that drive has the ability to zero out the entire drive,
FAT included, as well as finding and marking 'true' bad sectors.  Then run
Scandisk a few more times for good luck.  If no errors are found, you just
might have a 'good' drive.


     Good luck...  M.

--- Msged/386 TE 06 (pre)