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SG Enterprise encryption - Bad Sectors survey

jb1111

Has anyone here encountered bad sectors on encrypted machines?  I had 2 computers run for 3-4 months, get bad sectors and start crashing or going to a Windows screen with no icons <-you can only power off at this point.  Attempting to fix the bad sectors does not help.  The only thing I've gotten to work is backup the files (assuming I can even get into the system) and destroy the hard disk with Dban or killdisk.  These low level format and, "Zero out" the drive.  Once this 6 hour process is done, I reload Windows.  Chkdsk no longer shows bad sectors and life is good.

Has anyone come up with another approach to bad sectors or other hard drive issues?  I am most concerned this will be a monthly occurance.  Perhaps I could get a utility to report when drives start getting bad sectors?

Thanks.

PS - my SG policy is set to, "Proceed on bad sectors = yes"

:4085


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    Hi all,

    thank you very much for bringing up this topic. Please let me add my two cents...

    Actually the given explanation is correct. When installing SafeGuard Enterprise we write the so called Kernel to the drive. The kernel area is at 96MB and we mark this section as bad. This area is needed to store the Power on Authentication (POA) and the freeBSD to load the POA.

    When running a chkdsk on a system that has SGN installed there will always be at least 96 MB of bad sectors showing up - which indeed is the kernel area. Actually it is true that these sectors are not really bad sectors (physically damaged) anyway the bad sector mark must not be removed.

    As a result of this we highly recommend not to use chkdsk /r on a machine that has SafeGuard Enterprise installed - instead of this please use chkdsk /l /f /v /x

    Also it is better to use an external tool to check the general health status of the drive.

    Last but not least we recommend to check the drive before installing SafeGuard Enterprise using CHKDSK > at this point (and only here) chkdsk /r can be used if desired, however, we recommend to replace a drive rather than installing SafeGuard Enterprise if bad sectors are found beforehand.

    I hope I could clarify things a little bit :smileyhappy:

    Regards

    Dan

    :4398
Reply
  • 0

    Hi all,

    thank you very much for bringing up this topic. Please let me add my two cents...

    Actually the given explanation is correct. When installing SafeGuard Enterprise we write the so called Kernel to the drive. The kernel area is at 96MB and we mark this section as bad. This area is needed to store the Power on Authentication (POA) and the freeBSD to load the POA.

    When running a chkdsk on a system that has SGN installed there will always be at least 96 MB of bad sectors showing up - which indeed is the kernel area. Actually it is true that these sectors are not really bad sectors (physically damaged) anyway the bad sector mark must not be removed.

    As a result of this we highly recommend not to use chkdsk /r on a machine that has SafeGuard Enterprise installed - instead of this please use chkdsk /l /f /v /x

    Also it is better to use an external tool to check the general health status of the drive.

    Last but not least we recommend to check the drive before installing SafeGuard Enterprise using CHKDSK > at this point (and only here) chkdsk /r can be used if desired, however, we recommend to replace a drive rather than installing SafeGuard Enterprise if bad sectors are found beforehand.

    I hope I could clarify things a little bit :smileyhappy:

    Regards

    Dan

    :4398
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