bad sector at C drive

First, back up ALL critical files.

Next, a few bad sectors is normal for any hard drive. When you format a drive, one of the things that happens is that bad sectors are noted and added to a list of sectors to not use.
Formatting a drive does not necessarily get rid of bad sectors. If a sector cannot be recovered, it is marked as bad.
Bad sectors discovered during the format process are NOT listed as bad sectors by most disk utilities. They are ignored.

While some disk utilities can recover bad sectors, unless you are low on hard drive space, you should leave then as marked bad and not to be used.

You should monitor the drive, and if there is a continual increase in bad sectors, the drive should be replaced.

Chas

Simple, don't worry about it. Just keep an eye on your system if it gets worst over a short amount of time then your disk may fail.

Always back up everything.

No, There is no way you can eliminate bad sectors without reformatting.
I hope this happened along time ago and no new bad sectors has rear its ugly head. From experience, newly detected bad sectors are a sign of a failing drive.
What happens during the re-format is that the bad sectors are marked as unusable.
So if it ain't new, don't reformat. Otherwise;
My suggestion is to back-up your data, reformat the drive, and start shopping for a new hard-drive.
New bad-sectors are not marked as unusable, and some of your data may go astray.

In my experience, even a few bad sectors indicate that the hard drive is starting to fail. If possible, temporarily connect up a second hard drive (as secondary master usually) and copy any important files across.

Get yourself a new hard drive, or a second-hand one that has been checked with Scandisk Thorough to make sure it has no bad sectors.

Reinstall your operating system and other software, and copy the saved files onto the new hard drive.

I take it you did a scan disk and it flagged the bad sectors for you? That's ok, that's what it's there for. Scan Disk finds and marks bad sectors and 'eliminates' them from use.

Reformatting generally won't reclaim any bad sectors - they'll just get tagged for non use like scan disk does - and if a format finds too many bad sectors then it may even refuse to do the format.

The only time bad sectors are really bad is when it's in the Boot sector (right at the start of the drive)

A good rule of thumb is not to use HDDs with more than 2% bad sectors.

Keep running scan disk on a regular basis as an increasing number of bad sectors means the HDD is on its way out. The risk is that eventually the boot sector will become bad and then your up the proverbial creek without a paddle. Time to start saving for a new one (HDD that is, not a new paddle).

Enjoy!

All drives have bad sectors out of the factory. However you don't know it because they've already been mapped out.
A drive that is suddenly showing bad sectors is getting ready to puke. Ghost it to a new drive while you have a chance. If it fails completely and you still need the data, send it to me. I'll do a data recovery on it.

There are two sure things.

The drive is going to get more bad sectors.

You will loose your data.

You can use a drive diagnostic software that will try to recover the data that is on those sectors and then map them out.

Back your data up. Download the diagnostic software from the drive makers site and diagnose the drive.

Lee