Bad hard drive Sector report - Internal notebook computer HD - Help needed.

[ssfc72]

I was trying to use Clonzilla to create on Image of my Acer Aspire 11" notebook and Clonzilla kept failing to create the Image.
The Acer has a 500G Western Digital drive.

I finally ran the Disk utility that comes with the Mint 17.3 Distro.  It is a Gnome disk utility.

The utility reported "Disk is OK, one bad sector" but all the other checks showed everything else passed.  There is no indication on what partition, the bad Sector is located in.

I then ran a "Smart Data and Self Test" that was available in the disk utilty and it reported "Self Test Failed"

There doesn't seem to be any way that this disk utility will isolate the bad sector, so that I can continue, to perhaps Image the drive.

I am wondering if there is such a free Linux utility, that will isolate the bad sector.

Western Digital may have a free disk repair utility but if the bad Sector is in a Linux partition, the utility may not find it?

My notebook dual boots Win7 and Mint 17.3 and both OS's are functioning fine, at the moment.

Anyone have any suggestions on how I can get around the bad Sector, so that Clonzilla will Image the drive??

[Jason]

I feel your pain.    The only program I know of that maps around bad sectors (other than by doing a destructive low-level format) is Spinrite. Bob has a copy but hasn't created an account in these new forums (or is still unaware of them). Do you have his number to text him? I can message it to you if you don't. He's also more of a Clonezilla guru than I am so he might also know how to tell it to ignore bad sectors.

[William Park]

"badblocks" is the low-level utility that is normally called by "mkfs",
    mkfs.ext4 -cv /dev/sdx    --- read check (non-destructive)
or
    mkfs.ext4 -ccv /dev/sdx    --- read/write check (destructive)

[ssfc72]

Thanks for the info, Jason!

I do have a saved image of the Acer notebook from a few months back, so I am ok with being able to restore the notebook.

Went to the Western Digital website and unfortunately the drive only appears to have a 3 yr warrantly on it, so I am out of luck there. The Notebook is 4 1/2 yrs old.

I can buy a new 500GB drive for around $70, which has a 5 yr warranty ( I will have a nice motorcycle ride to Canada Computers in Whitby :-) ), so that is what I will probably do.

A 500GB SSD is too much $$$ , around $200, to spend on a 5 yr old notebook.

[ssfc72]

Thanks William!

"badblocks" is the low-level utility that is normally called by "mkfs",
    mkfs.ext4 -cv /dev/sdx    --- read check (non-destructive)
or
    mkfs.ext4 -ccv /dev/sdx    --- read/write check (destructive)

[fox]

If none of those other solutions work, you could try to do a partition clone instead of a whole disk clone. That would tell you which partition is failing.

[William Park]

"badblocks" is the low-level utility that is normally called by "mkfs",
    mkfs.ext4 -cv /dev/sdx    --- read check (non-destructive)
or
    mkfs.ext4 -ccv /dev/sdx    --- read/write check (destructive)

Of course, "mkfs" itself is destructive , unless you use "-n" option.  You can use "badblocks" directly, and it will give you sector number of the bad sectors.  Then, you have to check them against partition table to figure out where they are.  One advantage of "mkfs" is that it will tell the filesystem not to use the bad sectors automatically.

[bobf]

STOP!! SpinRite will fix it in place, so this is doable. Also, there's MHDD, which also presents a graphical representation of what it's doing as you go, but the fix becomes destructive as well. Your best bet is SpinRite, which will find then remap the bad sector to another reserved block, once it's done the best it can to recover the data, unless it can hold that sector up in memory and overwrite that block a few times until it recertifies it, then puts your data right back where it was...

Even if your drive is failing, SR can resurrect it well enough to allow you to successfully image the drive off, *if* it was ever going to happen, and will also tell you the drive is pooched and needs replacement, if it doesn't like how well it responds to its directive to recover the save/read the area in question. And it works at a VERY low level, as does MHDD (in different ways, I think), as opposed to other tools I've seen.

[fox]

This SpinRite looks interesting, but unless I'm missing something, it isn't free; it costs $US89. Also, it appears to be Windows software that also works on Linux (and Mac) partitions.

[bobf]

Mike! I'm bereft... You honestly don't think I'd have a USB key for that?!?! <^8#

Bring it with you, Bill - we'll get it sorted out...!! <^8#

Oh, and it does BSD-based, Tivo, Xbox, PSx, etc... It initiates in FreeDOS, but the functionality is LOW-level; if it can see *a* hard drive logically (apparently *NOT*!! an SSD!! - REALLY bad idea!), it can run its full capabilities upon it mechanically. It's actually quite interesting - the program itself is about 176k in size, and, depending on where you invoke it (MS-DOS vs. Windows), it begins with its own self-test to ensure it hasn't been compromised by malware, then, if in Windows, unpacks a floppy disk image that can also be burned to a CD/DVD, and if in DOS, invokes the program itself.

It offers multiple levels of intensity, and when it finds a disk sector with problems, does its best to recover it then maps it to a substitute from the reserved sector map, assuming one is available.  *THIS* is why people have been over the moon about it for decades - it'll come back from a deep recovery run, having done so, restoring your HDD's functionality, *THEN* tell you your HDD is screwed (assuming...) and that you should back it up IMMEDIATELY and then replace your drive.

Voila! Saved the day!! <^8#

It has, however, been known to fail... If it can't see the drive logically, it's already gone... And if your HDD is so pooched that it runs out of available reserve mappings.... (*Waa - waa - WAAAAAH!*) Same deal.

[ssfc72]

I have used Mike's tip about doing a Clonzilla image of each individual partition, of the drive. The sda3 partition, which is the Win7 partition, fails to do a Clonzilla image.

I booted up the Win7 and ran a CHKDSK.  It was finding quite a few bad files and did a repair.

Once CHKDSK was done, I booted into the Mint17.3 on the notebook and ran the Gnome Disk utilty again.  It still showed the disk had a bad Sector but also siad the Disk was OK?
I then ran a Disk Test that was available in the Gnome Disk utility and it said the disk failed the test.

I then again, ran Clonzilla to create a backup image of the whole drive and it worked fine! :-)


I can now proceed to do an update to Win 10 and create a Clonzilla image of that OS. :-)

OK, Bob, I will bring my notebook ( with Win7 back on it) to Mondays PLUG Mug but there is no dvd drive on this notebook so I don't know if you will be able to run that Spinrite program?

[ssfc72]

So, even though the 500GB HD seems to be working OK, with the Bad Sector, I have now purchased a 250GB SSD, to replace it, in my old Acer 11.6" notebook (Intel Core i3).

Now the problem is to get Clonezilla to Image to a smaller Disk.

I used Gparted to shrink down the partitions on the 500GB HD, so that all the partitions add up to be smaller than the target disk.
This has left a couple of areas of Unallocated Space, on the HD.  I also have made the origiinal, sda1 partition, into Unallocated Space since this partition was for a third party backup program, which I never used.
Both Mint17.3 and Win7, which are on the 500GB drive, work fine after using Gparted to massage the HD. :-)

Clonzilla is supposed to be able to Image to a smaller Disk by using the Advance Mode and setting a certain command. This command tells Clonzilla to not complain and to ignore the fact that the target disk is smaller than the source disk.

When I tried this imaging to the smaller HD, Clonzilla still failed with a message that the target drive was too small. :-(

I am now going attempt to use Gparted again, to try and move the all the individual Unallocated Space, to the right hand side of the Gparted table.
I hope this might allow Clonezilla to image to the smaller target disk.