bad block--what must I do?

DiskWarrior is thought to be the best application for solving this issue. While a bad block isn't likely to be a major problem in the short term, it's an indication of uncertain risk.

Otherwise, reformatting the entire drive and reinstalling the OS isn't terribly painful: with a reinstall and downloading the upgrade files, the whole operation should take around three hours. I also might suggest that you back up your HD, or at least your important files - if you haven't done so already.

I would reformat the drive using the "Zero all data" option under "Security Options" in your Disk Utility.

Dave M.
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Depends on the nature of your back-up, sers.

This is the sort of situation where a bootable SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner backup comes into its own.

Simply wipe the drive using Disk Utility, with basic zeroing selected in the security options, boot from the back-up, and clone back to the internal.

Then run TTPs "surface scan" again. If it finds more bad blocks on the new scan after the old ones have in theory been "mapped out" it suggests that the drive itself is probably deteriorating to the point where there are more "bad blocks" on it than the "mapping out" process can handle, and you should very seriously think about replacing the drive. A few bad blocks, that can be dealt with by zeroing to "remap" the drive, are pretty common, but if new ones keep on appearing things aren't looking so good.

For a more thorough examination you might also want to run "Smart Utility" over the drive , to see what it has to say about it. http://www.volitans-software.com/smart_utility.php

Cheers

Rod

Poikkeus, I don't believe DiskWarrior does any kind of bad block repairs. It rebuilds the directory.

Quite right, sig.

Disk Warrior can be useful in helping to recover directories on a drive with bad blocks on occasion, but it certainly doesn't "repair" the blocks themselves, or "map" them out.

For an excellent FAQ on bad blocks, and the best approach to dealing with them it is hard to go past THIS ONE from Coriolis Systems.

Cheers

Rod