# How can I get a count of bad sectors?



## bellgamin (Apr 6, 2001)

Is there a fast/easy way to get a count of the number of bad sectors on my HD?

Why do I want this? Because certain types of *stealth* viruses hide themselves by pretending their location is a bad sector. Ergo, a significant change in the number of bad sectors could indicate a stealth virus has invaded. I want to be able to monitor this.

P.S. I want to count bad sectors but I'm not sure what a "bad sector" really is, technically speaking. What is it? Is it the same as a "bad cluster?"

aloha from Hawaii......bellgamin


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## pvc9 (Jul 7, 2002)

Check this link -

Bad Sector

If you think its a virus, then the virus program(s) should do their job. I'm not sure if there is a utility that will 'count' the actual number of bad sectors. Never are the number of bad sectors eqaul. For eg they could be 15 or 20 one day and after a week it could be something like 100 or 200 or maybe 25. So you never know when the HDD goes south.

The only way to know the current number of bad sectors is run the scandisk and it'll display the number of bad sectors in the results...


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## Moby (Mar 19, 2002)

If you do a defrag too that gives you a legend of the state of play with all tour sectors and does a count for you at the end, or rather in ME it does, don't know about the others.


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## Mosaic1 (Aug 17, 2001)

Perform a surface Scandisk. It will find and mark any bad sectors as bad.


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