Good program to check disks for bad sectors?

Posted:
in Genius Bar edited January 2014
Is using Disk Utility and "Verify Disk" good enough to check a disk for bad sectors? I just bought a new external hard drive and want to check to see if it has bad sectors.



Thanks in advance,



Aiolos

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 1
    spotonspoton Posts: 645member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by aiolos View Post


    Is using Disk Utility and "Verify Disk" good enough to check a disk for bad sectors? I just bought a new external hard drive and want to check to see if it has bad sectors.



    Thanks in advance,



    Aiolos





    Verify just checks the structure, not for bad sectors.



    No need to buy or run anything else, just Disk Utility Erase with Zero the new drive and the bad sectors will be mapped off automatically and permanently. Takes a bit but it´s worth it.



    The driver software is supposed to map off bad sectors as it writes, but in my opinion it´s not perfect as people still have problems, especially with large files like video.



    Zeroing checks every bit on the drive, and if finds a bad sector it maps it off, not to be written to again. So there isn´t a problem later if the driver manages to write your valuable data to a bad sector and then later can´t read it.



    Good luck.
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