Bad Clusters (Was Re: Vista? Hello or goodbye?)

[Dave S]

Just out of interest, why the full format? Because resizing partitions
on a drive with bad clusters is unlikely to work and/or may have
unpredictable results?  If so, I may just try resizing them in Gparted
anyway and get to keep the pieces if it breaks.

I'm not even sure this machine comes with a way to reinstall Vista
(which I'm still prepared to try out for a while) - it may do, but I
can't spot any hidden 5GB partitions (there is one hidden partition
that is 39MB) or options to unhide them in the BIOS.  I was going to
try it with ntfsclone and restore the image to a new NTFS partition,
and then use the Neosmart Vista Recovery CD to fix the stuff that may
break in the process - maybe I'll still do this.

I sort of don't care that much if I lose Vista in the process or not,
but I wouldn't mind trying to keep it if I can, just to try it out for
a while.

Or it's a full reinstall with WinXP and Linux I think, because I don't
think I can necessarily guarantee that I can reinstall Vista on here,
and I'm really not prepared to splash out on Win7.  (Seriously, I only
stopped using Win2k and switched to XP for music making about two
years ago - I am in no hurry for Win7, but might give Vista a try for
a bit longer if I can manage to keep it.)

Urgh, computers!

Cheers,

~Dave


On 10 May 2011 15:49, Jay Vaughan <jayv at synth.net> wrote:
> Do a full format, re-install Win7 and Linux, let the respective filesystems of either one sort it out.  A few bad clusters here and there isn't a terrible loss - but do keep an eye on it.