Bad Cluster Hard Drive Unrecoginzed

[Prashant]

I have a hard drive, which has bad clusters on it. It seems that the bad clusters are due to physical damage, because everytime scandisk runs it hangs at 88%. I have now tried to format this drive but now the format hangs at 88% I don't know how to mark this sector as bad, and skip so format can finish and I can reinstall the OS. Any of you guys have any suggestions, Please do answer.

Cheers
Prashant

[tycoonist]

Have you tried running Scandisk under Safe Mode? I know that I have to run Scandisk and Disk Defrag under Safe Mode because of it hanging at certain numbers. Plus, it says that the drive contents are chaning and it has to restart. Finally, you can check on the Microsoft site for solutions.

[Prashant]

Yes, I did do all of that, but unfortunately nothing turned up. Now I don't have anything on my computer. Before I was able to skip the scan disk part and get into my OS. Now even that is gone.

Cheers
Prashant

[G Ray88]

Prashant,
Do you have information on the drive that you want to save, you might be able to gain access to the drive by using your startup disk in the floppy drive when you start the computer. At the A:\ prompt type C: \dir /p , and see if shows the contents of your drive, if it does you might be able to transfer your information to a floppy disk or another hard drive if it is still intacked. Usually when the HD shows bad clusters it's time for a new drive, the HD usually will not get any better. If this doesn't work you might want to try www.ontrack.com they have a data recovery program that may help. Good Luck