Need Hard Drive Help

[lostinlodos]

Does anyone know a free, trialware, or (yuck) commercial package that can do the following:

Recover usable data from failing sectors
remove the sector address from the file table so as to permanently remove any chance of it ever being used again


I'm not looking for something like Norton Disk Doctor which has not worked so far. I don't want to recover the sector, I want to remove it (block it) to keep from writing over it again. Any ideas what to use?
Thanks

[lazzerjett]

Try Spinrite, www.grc.com

[Wiggins]

In the 1980s it was common to tell the file system not to use blocks which are bad, but since the 1990s the HDD controller does this job transparent (in the background, with reserved blocks for replacing bad ones). If you see bad blocks there are serious errors and the hardware should not be used anymore.
If you want, you can try using the defekt hardware, but many bad blocks are not reproducable (their number and addresses changes) because often the error is not on the HDD but at the cable or the HBA or at the communication of the HBA on the PCI bus.

[oldjoe]

"Failing" sectors are the beginning of the inevitable failure. Save what you can.