Talk:Bad sector

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[edit] Spare sectors

"When the operating system begins to detect bad sectors, in most cases, it means that the surface of the hard disk is failing and the drive has run out of spare sectors with which to remap the failed sector."

How many spare sectors does a disk generally have? I figure it probably depends on the size of the disk, but what's typical for let's say a 100 GB HD? Frederik Holden 16:44, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

Hard disk sectors are 512 bytes generally (but it may me 256,1024 or more). So for a 100 GB hard disk (which is 107374182400 or 1024^3*100 bytes) you would have 209715200 sectors (107374182400 divided by 512). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.81.166.246 (talk) 21:40, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Oops - I didn't read your question very carefully. How many SPARE sectors does a drive have. I could not quickly find amy information on this. I'd bet it's a risk vs. reward system with the HD manufacturers. They'd want the most storage for the least amount of sacrifice of physical drive space to be able to offer the most competitive price. Perhaps higher-end (server) drives have larger spare sector areas. Nothing to substantiate any of that, however. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.81.166.246 (talk) 21:47, 14 March 2008 (UTC)