Intentionally create bad sectors?

endersftd

This is a pretty off-the-wall question, but does anyone know of a program that can intentionally create bad sectors on a hard disk (example: repeatedly re-writing over the same track)?

TheShadow

I don't believe so. The best that one could do is a low level routine to corrupt the directory with a sector editor however that is a directory error and not a bad sector. The actual sector itself is controlled by the hardware. A true bad sector is a firecode error (CRC) and only occurs if more than 13 bits in the sector are unreadable after n tries. SMART should report it long before the operating system knows about it because it is either a surface error or a failing head.

JDMurray

I believe that it is possible to mark/unmark sectors as bad using SCSI disk technology. There are programs that hide information in disk sectors by marking the sectors as bad, thus causing all programs to avoid read the entire cluster that the sector is in. EIDE disk technology, however, hides bad sectors from the operating system. If you were successful in marking a sector (or cluster) bad on an EIDE drive, you'd instantly loose access to it.

The differing disk technologies make for some fascinating problems in the areas of data recovery and digital forensics. You might find some good information on manipulating sectors in the discussions at Gibson Research (http://www.grc.com/discussions.htm) in the grc.spinrite.* newgroups.

RussS

There is a virus out there that will create 'bad sectors' - this usually causes an OS to not load.

endersftd

Thanks everyone. I know it's not everyday that someone asks how to cause a bad sector, rather than recover from one (BTW, HD Regen is an awesome program to regenerate bad sectors).

I'm actually trying to get a notebook hard disk to fail a BIOS hard disk diagnostic (without bashing the disk with a hammer or something that would alter the structual integrity of the disk). So whatever method I might investigate, it needs to cause damage at the hardware level so the BIOS will detect the problem.

Do you think if I held a hard disk magnet to the chips on the circuit board on the disk, that it might cause the BIOS to have trouble accessing the disk?

sprkymrk

Are you just looking for an error code in order to get a drive covered under warranty? I've had it happen where some low level Dell weenie refuses to issue a replacement drive for one I know is bad just because it doesn't fail their diags.

endersftd

You've seen through me, except it's with HP instead of Dell. We've got 12 identical laptops, and 6 have had hard drive failures already. I've had a few where I have to run the diag check three times or more before it displays an error code, so I was trying to, er, facilitate the ease to which the error code will appear. Aside from that, HP's been really good about sending me replacement HDs (except one time they sent me a replacement HD that immediately failed the diagnostic check, so I had to send them back their replacement to get another replacement - my confidence is not doing so great).

JDMurray

In that case, I'd put the running hard drive on a flexible table top, start a long, very intense disk access operation (file copy, read/seek test, etc.) and pound on the table top until the drive has jumped form one end of the table to the other. You can get a second person and make an air hockey game out of it. I bet you'll get some bad sectors out of that!

MrD

That is awesome! I'm up for some air-hockey!

endersftd

Gracious. :P I could imagine something like that show up on YouTube.