Hard drive bad sector

i recently tried to decrypt my hard drive with truecrypt. i had previously done a full disk encryption on the drive. it failed. truecrypt indicated that there was a hardware problem that prevented the data from being read.

i then ran spinrite on the drive. spinrite for some reason did not log any errors, but it did tell me through dynastat that there was a bad sector and it tried to read the sector 2000 times before announcing that all operations were completed.

spinrite did do something to the drive, because truecrypt was able to complete the decryption process immediately after spinrite had done its job. the only worry i have is that spinrite only put a bandage over a deep wound and that it just marked the sector as bad. of course, the wound may not be deep. it may be just a problem at the data level, but i am not technically sophisticated enoguh to know this.

since both truecrypt and spinrite had told me that there was a problem, and they both indicated that the problem occurred at a specific percentage (0.3), i infer that there really is a problem. the question is: what problem? is it a hardware problem or a software problem?

are there any other third party tools i can run to check whether there is a problem at the hardware level with my hard drive for sure? please help i don't care how long the tool takes to do its job. i want thoroughness.

i ran spinrite level 1 again after powering the computer off, and it didn't show any errors the second time again. i don't know why, but i fear it may be ignoring the bad sector that it may have already marked as bad instead of telling me that there is a bad sector.

 

If it's a bad sector, it is a hardware problem. There's not a massive amount you can do apart from buy a new HDD, as bad secotr problems will evetually lead to more headaches and hdd failure.

Download HDTune and run the error scan. This will tell you if you have bad sectors.

 

It's a hardware problem.

 

thanks for the suggestions so far. i downloaded hd tune, but it's running in windows only. sectors that have been marked as bad are not visible to the operating system, right? don't i need a utility that boots from a cd or flash drive before windows even starts?

 

If you run HDTune it will scan every sector on your HDD, regardless of what the operating system sees.

 

cool, does this mean it will also check for sectors in the p list and g lists?

 

can somebody clarify the extent to which hdtune or other utilities can scan for bad sectors with respect to g lists and p lists please?

certain utilities such as secure erase can erase even sectors listed in the g list, but the bios of your computer may prevent you from using secure erase.

i have very little information on this though, so i would welcome any help.