i have an external WD 500GB drive that showed up many bad sectors.. I did a Surface Test > Reinitialize disk surface and the result was 27 fixed sectors but still one (the last one) returns this error "Unrecoverable error Block: 9999". I suspect that the problem with this disk started from there because some other software (from the many I used) said something about the backup NTFS boot sector being corrupt and that it was on the last part of the drive.. Is there something else I can do about that last block to fix it?
Generally (as you could see) the Reinitialize disk surface function is the best way to force the hard disk to fix possible damaged sectors, but yes, there may even more serious issue and/or it is possible that the drive may not able to properly reallocate the sector.
Personally I'd try to "target" this Reinitialize disk surface function and use a high repeat count to even more "force" the hard disk drive to attempt repairing. So I'd try to use Disk menu -> Surface test -> select the drive and the Reinitialize disk surface function but before starting the test, select Configuration tab in this window and specify
- Limit testing to specific data blocks: First block: 9999 (and leave the Last block as 9999)
- Repeat test: 10 times (alternatively you may increase the "Surface re-initializaion level" on the bottom)
This would attempt to specifically reinitialize (10 times) that specific block.
Hopefully the even more intensive reinitialization would help to disk drive to repair, reallocate that particular sector.
How this drive connected? Internal or by using external enclosure/dock?
In some rare situations, the connection (the disk controller) can cause issue with the very last sector, so if possible, I'd try to connect differently:
- using USB adapter/enclosure (if not used currently)
- connecting to direct SATA port or using different USB adapter (if USB adapter/enclosure/docking station used now)
Just worth a try.
Can you please use Report menu -> Send test report to developer option? Would be curious to see the current status of the disk drive (generally status of such disks always help, ideally would be excellent to see the status before-after repairing, to track how problems repaired and fixed, as this always give further ideas, thoughts about future improvements).
Thanks for the very nice reply. What I did, and I don't know if this is correct, is to "shrink" the disk making the partition smaller by 100MB hopefully leaving this bad sector at the end out of the partition. Will this indeed "solve" the problem of that block or is this something logical meaning that it show that it is the last block but shrinking the partition and leaving 100MB out of the partition these might not be physically the last 100MB of the "damaged" block?
