I'm not sure what you mean by check and mark the drive. Perhaps you mean check the drive for bad sectors and mark any bad sectors? To answer your question about why I don't just have the manufacturer replace the drive since it is under warranty...the answer is that there is nothing wrong with the drive. I am simply trying to figure out how to erase and recreate the bad sector map because I am trying to come as close to a low level format as possible. The reason being that I believe there may be some malware hidden in the area of the drive reserved for storing the sector map or other data such as operating parameters like sector size, cluster size, etc. Perhaps such data is stored somewhere in the drive firmware instead of on the disk? Regardless, I would imagine that anyware data can be stored...malware can also reside. So, I am trying to figure out how to erase such areas of the drive which might not be erased with a quick format or by using the diskpart 'clean all' command. By the way, I've tried using the CHKDSK commands after using the diskpart 'clean all' command but it finishes almost immediately unless I specify a drive and use the /r (or was it /f?) and /b switches after which it tells me that my hard drive is write protected and cannot complete the task. This was immediately after performing the clean all command on the entire drive. I don't know what I did wrong or could do differently. Perhaps assign a drive letter instead of leaving the default drive number (drive 0). Or perhaps create a partition within the drive first. Alas, perhaps simply using the diskpart 'format' command will accomplish all that I am trying to accomplish? As stated, I have already used the 'clean all' command and I thereafter installed the OS and backed up the system using a disk image burned to a DVD and I do not want to do that again if I have already erased the bad sector map. Something tells me that 'clean all' does not erase the sector map (nor the area of the drive reserved for operating parameters). Any help in getting accurate answers to these questions and accomplishing my goals will be tremendously appreciated. Thank you all for the help so far.