Bad Block

Hi,
have a dell laptop (seagate 40gb hd) running win xp ntfs partition

since yesterday i have two entries in my event viewer

Event ID 7 The device \device\harddisk0\d has a bad block,

went onto the seagate website ran the online tests, the results.
"your seagate disk has returned a smart alert or a failed self test"

ran chkdsk /f , still no change, also downloaded a couple of tools (hard
disk related) and they picked up nothing in their tests.

is a bad block the same as a bad sector?
can i fix this fault?
what is the best imaging software out there (if im going to have to replace
the disk)

Thanks for your help

"Trent" <trent.DeleteThis@says.com> wrote in message news:39rt08F64srk1U1@individual.net...
 > Hi,
 > have a dell laptop (seagate 40gb hd) running win xp ntfs partition
 >
 > since yesterday i have two entries in my event viewer
 >
 > Event ID 7 The device \device\harddisk0\d has a bad block,
 >
 > went onto the seagate website ran the online tests, the results.
 > "your seagate disk has returned a smart alert or a failed self test"
 >
 > ran chkdsk /f , still no change, also downloaded a couple of tools (hard disk
 > related) and they picked up nothing in their tests.

 > is a bad block the same as a bad sector?

Yes, tho the block can be more than one sector if the OS is reporting that.

 > can i fix this fault?

That hard drive manufacturer's ute should be able to map it away.

Its likely that the problem is that the dell is running the hard drive
right on the edge of what the manufacturer allows temperature wise.

 > what is the best imaging software out there (if im going to have to replace
 > the disk)

Ghost 9 works pretty well. Main downside with it is that you have
to install it on the hard drive before you can image the drive.

True Image allows you to boot the CD and image the drive without
installing it on the hard drive, but since its Linux based, it can be
rather more problematical supporting the hardware.<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->