Bad Sectors

[AnotherMortal]

Is there anyway to mark bad sectors on a Mac? I know with PCs that you can run scandisk or another norton utilities tool to mark the bad sectors, but Macs don't use a FAT style partitioning type, they use a proprietary that can't handle the marking of bad sectors? I was told by someone that there really is no way of marking sectors on a drive "bad" when using a Mac. But that information was given to me prior to OS X. Is there a way now (2 years or so since I was told Mac can't handle bad sectors) to mark sectors as bad, or do I need to order a new drive?

[MisterMe]

Originally posted by AnotherMortal
Is there anyway to mark bad sectors on a Mac? I know with PCs that you can run scandisk or another norton utilities tool to mark the bad sectors, but Macs don't use a FAT style partitioning type, they use a proprietary that can't handle the marking of bad sectors? I was told by someone that there really is no way of marking sectors on a drive "bad" when using a Mac. But that information was given to me prior to OS X. Is there a way now (2 years or so since I was told Mac can't handle bad sectors) to mark sectors as bad, or do I need to order a new drive? Your friend is just plain stupid. Because all hard disks have some bad sectors, it is essential that they be able to mark and lock-out the bad ones. That was true before MacOS X and it is true now. This is a function performed by just about any decent disk utility.

[AnotherMortal]

But what utilities can I use to mark sectors as bad in OS X(and Mac OS 9), and at what point do I know without a doubt (besides the kiss of death crashed head) that I need a new drive before I loose data?