PC hardware forum: How do I fix bad sectors on my hard drive without an os?

It's called data lifeguard and comes in several flavors. With no OS you need to get the bootable floppy or CD version. But, you need to download that on a PC with an OS, of course.

hard drives reserve some space for spare sectors but a bad sector can't be fixed -- they can only be replaced with a spare. if data lifeguard can't format your disk and an OS install to successfully, a new drive is the best solution.

you could try to partition the drive to skip over the bad sectors and just ignore that partition but you're flirting with a hard drive failure.

use Norton_Partition_Magic software

Those hardware manufacturers software programs will only prepare it to a factory state, it might fix some bad sectors but usually not.

The best software I found that fixes bad sectors is Steve Gibson's SpinRite program, if it can be fixed it will fix it. It doesn't matter what type of file system you have either. With raid you have to do some extra work before it will work.

It is pricey at just under a $100 however it has been worth it for me as I saved or prolonged the use of drives over the last 10 years.

Agree with you buddy.

Should have clarified.

A new disk is required even if spinrite does fix it.

After spinrite most drives last another 1 week to 6 months before another pass with spinrite or just dying, I've had a few last years however this is not typical.

Spinrite will fix the problem as it is now, however unless you were lucky enough to just have a short run of disk sectors go bad it'll get worse and usually exponentially so you'll need a new disk soon.

Get a new drive, use spinrite on current drive, transfer all files to new drive.