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From: emmo@moncam.co.uk (Dave Emmerson)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: What should I do when HD has lost clusters ?
Summary: lost != defective
Keywords: Hard Disk Drive, Lost Cluster
Message-ID: <664@marvin.moncam.co.uk>
Date: 3 Jun 90 07:08:04 GMT
References: <10755@medusa.cs.purdue.edu>
Organization: Monotype ADG, Cambridge, UK
Lines: 18

In article <10755@medusa.cs.purdue.edu>, wjin@cs.purdue.EDU (Woochang Jin) writes:
> I have a 42 M Fujizu MFM hard drive and when I 'chkdsk', it complains :
> 11 lost clusters. convert to files ?
> My friend advised to reformat the disk drive. 


Your friend doesn't appear to know the difference between "lost clusters"
and "bad blocks".
Run chkdsk /f again, this time reply 'y', then use LIST.COM or NU.EXE to 
inspect the files it produces. These will be in the disk's 'root' (\)
directory, named something like file0000.chk (read your DOS manual).
They'll probably contain garbage, they're usually the result of some
kind of abnormal programme termination while files which have been written
to are still open. Inspecting them might give you a clue as to what you
are doing wrong. Afterwards, you can erase them and forget them, there's
certainly no need to re-format.

Dave E.