Possibly Using Bad Sectors

Defraggler Defraggler Bug Reporting
1

I'll preface this by saying I don't know a lot about low-level HD operations.

Is it possible that Defraggler is using sectors that are marked as bad?

I used SpinRite to fix my Mom's harddrive recently. I should have moved her onto a new drive right away, but I've been busy and hadn't gotten around to it. Everything had been running fine for months, and now that I'm back here visiting, I decided to run Defraggler on her machine to clean it up a little. Well, after Defraggler finished, her computer was back to the same unresponsive mess that I was able to fix by using SpinRite previously.

This was an immediate and dramatic change, so it led me to wonder if SpinRite was using sectors that had been marked as bad, and therefore causing her drive problems again.

2

I think you may be asking whether SpinRite fixes a disc in a way that the repairs are liable to break when a third party defragmentation utility is used.

You may find the information you need at

https://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm

Otherwise you could ask the developer.

Or you could wait here to see if anyone happens to have "insider knowledge" that is not covered by an N.D.A.

3

Alan on the spinrite faq's it says

Will SpinRite also defragment my drives?

transpixel.gif

Nope. SpinRite is not a drive defragmenter. SpinRite operates with the drive's built-in intelligence to reassign and relocate defective sectors without creating file system fragments. Thus, running SpinRite does not create fragments, but neither does it eliminate any that may exist before it was run. You may use any common defragmenter (such as those built into Windows) either before or after using SpinRite.

http://www.grc.com/sr/faq.htm

4

Alan on the spinrite faq's it says

http://www.grc.com/sr/faq.htm

Hazel - you have more energy and endurance than I to work through the documents.

I failed to spot the relevance of your quote until I read a third time (I really need to get to bed earlier)

For the benefit of anyone else like myself I repeat with emphasis

Regards

Alan

Will SpinRite also defragment my drives?

transpixel.gif

Nope. SpinRite is not a drive defragmenter. SpinRite operates with the drive's built-in intelligence to reassign and relocate defective sectors without creating file system fragments. Thus, running SpinRite does not create fragments, but neither does it eliminate any that may exist before it was run. You may use any common defragmenter (such as those built into Windows) either before or after using SpinRite.

5

Is it possible that Defraggler is using sectors that are marked as bad?

To answer your question directly, the answer is no. Windows and the disk won't use a known bad/marked sector.

used SpinRite to fix my Mom's harddrive recently.

Exactly why did you run SpinRite in the 1st place? What was the exact failure that SpinRite corrected? Until I know more information and know precisely the mode of failure I wouldn't care to further speculate what is going here. This means running some advanced troubleshooting tools and doing further analysis of the suspect disk.

I'll make this simple here, you have two choices:

1- Determine the exact cause of the slowdown and troubleshoot the problem accordingly. Depending on your knowledge of computer and disk operations; this could take quite some time. You had indicated you're not familiar with low-level HDD operations. Be prepared to do some reading and analysis. Blindly running utilities because you think they *might* spot a problem isn't going to fix anything.

2- Replace the disk. This way you can be sure the drive is not the cause of the problem.