Australian PC World - More bad hard drive sectors

More bad hard drive sectors

I've installed a new hard drive on my PC and after running Scandisk, it reports many of the sectors on my system's hard drive as "bad". Have I got a lemon?

This error maybe caused by an incorrect BIOS setting in CMOS setup that reports the size of your hard drive incorrectly to MS-DOS or Windows. To correct this:
1. Enter the BIOS or CMOS setup on your PC (dependent on type of PC).
2. Find the section for for hard drive configuration.
3. Check that the information entered under Sectors, Cylinders and Head is correct. This information should be printed on the drive label or in the installation instructions.
4. If your hard drive is greater than 504Mb, and your BIOS supports LBA Mode, enable it. If it does not tell you, try using autodetect and see if the system will detect the drive's maximum capacity. If this fails also, your BIOS may not support large hard disk drive. Consult the hard drive manual to see if there's any OEM software which will overcome the problem. For example, Maxtor provides the Max Blast software for its hard drives.
5. Finally, repartition and reformat your hard drive.

Category: Digital Helpline, Hardware
Issue: Nov 1996
Pages: 184