"robert" writes:

A friend brought in his old toshiba laptop(satalite 4090) which had a
harddrive with lots of bad sectors. The laptop is a mess with mising panels
and he has rigged upa power supply directly to the battery terminals, the
power cord snaking in through a gap in the case.

I got him a cheap 1G hard drive from ebay that worked fine. 4 months later
he is back with 20 or more bad clusters scatterd right across the hard
drive.

Could this just be bad luck or could hardware problems on the laptop
(voltage spikes?) have caused this? I don't want him to put in another
harddrive for this to happen again in a couple of months.

Why not buy him a cheap laptop on eBay instead and put this thing out of
its misery.

Sure, power spikes are possible to kill sectors. Nothing wrong with the
drive if the sectors are mapped out.

--- sam | Sci.Electronics.Repair FAQ Mirror: http://repairfaq.ece.drexel.edu/
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