[Kevin M]

So, as I sit here reformatting my old laptop drive, because the zero sector or whatever it's called failed, I had a thought. Why don't computers just backup the important sector in 2 or 3 other places on a given drive? It would take a totally insignificant percentage of the available storage size on current massive hard drives, and it sure would be handy if instead of the dreaded lost hard drive, your computer would jsut tell you "hey, your boot sector went dead. I'm running on the backup one now, but in the meantime you should back this crap up and get another drive in here."

Am I really the first one to think of this, or is there some obvious reason that I missed as to why it wouldn't work? Obviously it wouldn't help you if your drive physically crashes, but it eliminates one major source of isues with data, right?