Re: Bad Clusters

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Robert Reader wrote:
I recently ran a chkdsk with the repair option on an external hard drive, and it reported the following on one of the files:

Windows replaced bad clusters in file 99407
of name \Archive\SOFTWA~1\TopoMaps\CONSOL~1\TopoMaps.zip.

I have several questions:
1) Does this mean the file it refers to is now corrupt? The file was still present on the disk after chkdsk finished. If bad clusters were found, I assume the data in the clusters is now trash.

2) Are bad clusters the same as bad sectors, ie, if a bad cluster exists it means it contains one or more bad sectors?

3) Further down in the same chkdsk report, it reported "0 KB in bad sectors". Why does it report this when it had just found some bad clusters? Does it report this because it had "fixed" them, ie, replaced them with spares, and bad sectors no longer exist?

I could find no documentation that clearly explains all this. Does anyone know of a good source of documentation for these kinds of questions?

Regards, Robert Reader 

This is the most in depth article I've found so far.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314835/EN-US/

Steve
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