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I have a 320GB hard drive and after testing it I found that the first 20GB have many bad sectors, and the rest of the disk is healthy. Now I want to sell it to a friend, I will format it and install windows myself. Here I will create a 20GB partition that will not be used and it will be hidden. But what if my friend tries to reinstall it himself. He will overwrite the partitions and get windows files written on the bad sectors.

Now, is there a way to permanently lock/hide the 20GB partition to prevent access to it even with a new installation of windows?

Thank you.

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    A HDD that has bad sectors will be found eventually. You are not doing a favor to your friend, your plan is noble, but there are flaws in your plan.
    – Ramhound
    Jun 17, 2014 at 10:56
  • Use your plan, give it to him for free, and explain what you did to make it usable for him.
    – Damon
    Jun 18, 2014 at 3:33

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A disk with bad sectors is not reliable. Modern disks have the capacity to transparently map out a handful of bad sectors -- as many as are deemed acceptable in terms of manufacturing defects, etc. When the number of bad sectors exceeds that value, it means that the disk is on its last legs. Although the disk might last a significant period of time without having the bad sectors spread, it's just as likely, if not more so, that new bad sectors will appear in the near future.

You say you plan to sell the disk to a friend of yours. If he's really your friend, you won't do so; instead, you'll wipe the disk of sensitive data and take it somewhere for recycling. At this point, it's really only safe as raw materials. (Of course, that leaves aside the question of the environmental and social impacts of "recycling" of electronics as it's often done today, but that's another matter.)

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You can indeed hide those sectors, but that won't prevent the disk to continue failing. You can create a new partition table, which effectively wipes all the information on the drive, and make a partition that starts at 20GB and goes up to the end of the disk, but there's no way to prevent your friend to create a new partition that starts at the very beginning of the drive and thus, discovering the bad sectors.

But anyway, if you insist; I suggest you use a proper tool, like GParted. Just burn the ISO to a disk (or make a bootable USB stick) and boot from it. It requires some knowledge about filesystems and partition tables, and how to operate this application. You'll find it easier with this tool since, as I mentioned, it's bootable so the drives are not in use while you perform changes on the partition layout.

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As far as I know what can be programmatically blocked, can later be programmatically unblocked provided user has enough technical knowledge and spare time.

Any software method you will use to block the corrupt area of the disk can later be overridden.

If you hide the partition using DiskPart, your friend can use DiskPart to unhide it If you leave the space unpartitioned your friend can use Disk Management to create a volume.

Your best bet is to repartition the disk so that the area with bad sectors are left out as unpartitioned space and explicitely explain the situation to your friend to make sure he does not try to use it. It is only 20 GB after all.

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