Re: Need disk error checker for Windows XP

D-W-S wrote:
> anon wrote on Sun, 26 Mar 2006 18:04:25 -0800:
> 
> 
>>Question - I thought that when the disk was formatted that 'something' was 
>>written to all the sectors during the formatting procedure
> 
> 
> In the real world, yes.
> 
> What Microsoft calles "formatting", in particular a "quick format", is 
> what everyone else calls "creating a filesystem". It assumes that the 
> device already *is* formatted and simply writes the stuff at the 
> beginning of the disk that defines the filesystem (bootsector, root 
> directory, initialised FATs for a FAT filesystem - not sure how NTFS 
> works).
> 
> A real "format then create filesystem" cycle is achieved by using the 
> "/u" option to the format command line. This should detect badblocks.

Format /u isn't listed as a switch in XP's format...but I tried it 
anyway along with /c (which tested existing bad clusters in Windows 9x 
versions of Format).  Both switches went through fine, and format did 
not detect any bad sectors at all.  Running Chkdsk immediately 
afterwards found 32k of bad sectors.  Filling the drive up with data and 
running chkdsk found about 200k of bad sectors.  Obviously, Chkdsk 
doesn't check free space.  *sigh*  SpinRite looks good, but it's 
terribly expensive.