It was supposedly brand new. Yeah, I knew about the likelihood of chkdsk just telling the system to "work around" those areas rather than actually fixing them, but is there any way to tell whether or not the corruption was due to physical damage?
The computer is still under warranty, though, so in any case I'll just see about getting them to replace the hard drive.
It could be from another source, but there is no way to tell without physically looking at it I suppose. Maybe some diagnostic tools.
From the book in front of me:
"
Checking Disk HealthA hard disk
can have physical areas that become damaged and therefore corrupt data stored in those locations. A disk area is that damaged this way is typically reported as bad sectors on the disk. Even if the disk is physically okay, misbehaving device drivers, applications, or intermittent faults in the hardware itself can
logically corrupt a file that is written to the disk. ... " page 171
- MCTS Guide to Windows 7, Byron Wright and Leon Plesniarski; prep for Exam#70-680
So you either have physical damage, or you had logical damage. If it was physical, the system told itself to not write to those physically damaged areas. If it was logically corrupted, it might be totally fine now.
Since it's under warranty I'd play the part of disappointed customer and see about just getting it replaced. If it is physical damage, you want no part of it.
