bad cluster

[shahid]

What is bad cluster?

How it comes to Hard Drive?

How we get rid from Bad cluster?

[Pirate]

What is bad cluster?
They are physical damages to the surface of a HD .

How it comes to Hard Drive?
They might be some dust , or caused by bad usage ..etc .

How we get rid from Bad cluster?
First try low-level format (just to get back your data ) otherwise , they are uncurable .

[siyan]

I believe how the drive acts on bad clusters depends on its design. IBM drives are notorious for continually trying to read/write on a bad cluster, for literally half an hour (tried it on my old IBM laptop before...long story).

However, if you do a low level format as pirate says, the drive *should* tag the clusters as bad and ignore them from then on. The format could take forever though depending on how many clusters are bad.

Also if you've recently dropped the HD, or if more bad clusters start to show up, get the drive replaces. It'd probably be due to loose bits of drive platter flying around in the casing (very bad).