Re: [smartmontools-support] Howto Bad Block in Windows

[BitBucket <fil...@gm...>]

Christian:

Did find nfi.exe in my bag of tricks, after rummaging around on my 
systems.  It's only one step, though, since the rest of the story is 
what to do with the sector/cluster/block whole drive once you've found 
it. (Windows tools and procedures in this case)

For the record, does the internal long test stop at the first 
unrecoverable read error?  Meaning, if there are multiple bad blocks, 
just clearing one doesn't do the job, since the next one will appear on 
the next scan.  In this case, the internal long test was 80% complete 
when it emitted the LBA bad block.

I'm working through a procedure to follow the next time this happens. 
Takes a while -- days, in fact, on a 200 GB drive.

-- Roy Zider


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Christian Franke" <Chr...@t-...>
To: "BitBucket" <fil...@gm...>
Cc: <sma...@li...>
Sent: Tuesday, September 29, 2009 3:11
Subject: Re: [smartmontools-support] Howto Bad Block in Windows


BitBucket wrote:
> OK, got my first bad block/unreadable sector error on a hard disk
> drive.  The Bad block HOWTO for smartmontools" at
> http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/badblockhowto.html has very
> detailed instructions for what to do next -- under Linux.  I've
> searched in vain for an reference to doing the same thing under
> Windows (Server 2003), though it is on 80?% of the machines today.
>
> Any pointers to help would be appreciated.
>

The old MS tool nfi.exe can be used to determine the file affected by a
bad block. This useful tool is (carefully hidden :-) in the OEM Support
Tools for W2K:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/253066/en-us
It still works on XP and 2003.

Example: Find volume and file for physical sector (=LBA) 87000000 on
first disk:

[X:\] nfi \device\harddisk0\dr0 87000000

***Physical sector 87000000 (0x52f83c0) is in file number 181799 on
drive C.
\WINDOWS\Installer\1259885.msp
    $STANDARD_INFORMATION (resident)
    $FILE_NAME (resident)
    $DATA (nonresident)
        physical sectors 86995532-87000499 (0x52f724c-0x52f85b3)

A NG article with further info:
http://groups.google.com/group/microsoft.public.win2000.file_system/browse_thread/thread/7cd6bbd5fade6590/


> (Great tool)
>

Thanks :-)

Cheers,
Christian