Bad Sectors

eponymous_one

New Member
Hi, I have a new hard disk which I would like to run DBAN on.

What I want to know is how to sort out physical/logical bad sectors before I run DBAN so I can make sure all sectors are overwritten.

Also, if I run DBAN, and it doesnt encounter any errors, does that mean there is no physical/logical bad sectors on the drive, or does it just mean the HDD has remapped the bad sectors and replaced them with good ones?

If so, how does one go about erasing these bad sectors?

thanks.
 
Typically speaking, once a computer recognizes that a sector is bad, it is marked as such and can't be written to. I think the Spinrite program from Steve Gibson tries to recover such sectors, that could then be overwritten.

However, from a normal-level security approach, you don't need to worry about overwriting those sectors as they won't be read. If you have a higher-than-normal security need, physically dismantling the drive or destroying the plates are your best bet.
 
thanks for your reply.

I did run SpinRite before the erase, and from what I can tell it didnt find any errors. Also I ran Dban (15 PRNG rounds) with full verification of every round and it found no errors. Does that mean the ENTIRE disk doesnt have ANY bad or remapped sectors?

Also, you say about physically destroying the disk; is there no software approach to erasing these sectors.

Finally, how much data is actually stored in a sector?

Thanks alot.
 
If you are asking these questions, then you should physically destroy the hard disk.

Most modern hard disks use logical 512 byte sectors, but do not assume any behavior that happens beneath the drive firmware.
 
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