!-> Bad blocks: need advice

[skohns@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu (Steve)]

Hi-


(bad blocks & other probs -- hard drive)
***


Lately, I've been having some trouble with the HD.  Just about a week ago,
when I first bought the computer, I started noticing some problems.
The errors said that there were errors on on of my paritions, and "please move
data from this drive."  I'm familiar with how to solve drive problems on a PC,
but am admittedly lost here.

For background, I have an Apple //gs, System 6.0, boots to finder, and an AE
Vulcan 40MB harddrive.

For starters, I tried moving the partitions and files around, folder by folder.
Eventually, I was able to rid myself (or so I thought) of these errors.  I
primarily used the "Disk..Verify" option under Finder.  Then, just today I got
strange "$0050 system error" while trying to save in the Scrollback Editor of
ProTerm.

Immediately after this error, it started checking the floppy drives, ignoring
the hard drive.  Then it gave the message "please insert disk AE1" -- which
is a partition on my hard drive.  Since it wouldn't do anything else, I shut
down the computer, waited and restarted it.  Since then, I've been gradually
more errors in this partition.  At this point, AE1 (my boot partition) won't
even allow for deleting files, or creating a New Folder.  It gives a
"directory error" and "bad block $0000".

***

What should I do at this point?  There don't seem to be errors on the other 
partitions.  Should I move the AE1 data (on the bad block partition) to one of
the others?  Will this create more problems?

Since I just bought the computer used, I'm not sure I have enough disks to
reinstall the system files...  Are there any "Norton Utils" for the //gs
(or similiar) that will detect and mark bad blocks so the drive can be used?
I've tried Copy II plus v8.4, but it doesn't detect any errors during verify,
but does when trying to make a directory or delete a file.


Thanks for reading this.  Any help would be appreciated!
-Steve