[joshbrinkley]

will formatting correct bad sectors or will i need a new harddrive?

 

[hopper]

Generally, yes. Actual hard drive failure is hard to predict. Perhaps someone can shed some more light.

 

[bry623]

You can try to format it, if it can't work around the bad sectors, it will not format at all.

 

[V0lt]

I have a hard drive with bad sectors. It doesn't boot, because some of the windows installation files were lost- but I'd imagine if I formatted it, it might work. The bad sectors would not be repaired, but they would be skipped over and left unused.

 

[Dorian Grey]

I know that quick formatting won't correct for sure and afaik ordinary formatting "just tries to make certain that bad sectors are bad" :smile:

 

[hopper]

I fixed one a month ago that, well, basically the entire hard disk was nothing but bad sectors. After much turmoil, I finally got it formatted and installed windows, but still showed many bad sectors. Then I ran chkdsk /r, and viola - no bad sectors.