An error was detected on device \Device\Harddisk3\D, bad block

Which disk drive letter it is based on Windows' Event Logs or Device Manager ? 

Microsoft Windows may report event messages in the event log for various hard disk device issues using the following syntax:

A device is mapped in windows using the following notation \Device\Harddisk#\Partition#

Typical examples are;  

• The device, \Device\Harddisk3\D,  error was detected on device
• The device, \Device\Harddisk0\Partition 1, has a bad block.
• The device, \Device\HardDisk1\Partition0, has been reset.
• An error was detected on device \Device\Harddisk3\D during a paging operation
  An error was detected on device \Device\Harddisk0\D during a paging operation

The recommend solution is to follow these Microsoft Articles:  

• "How to Distinguish a Physical Disk Device from an Event Message"http://support.microsoft.com/kb/159865/en-us
  
• Decode describe what each offset represents ie: 0x02
  http://support.microsoft.com/kb/244780

The above articles take to long to understand for the typical user. 

Solution: 

There is free utility called DiskExt v1.1, a SysInternals Tool now bought by Microsoft to aid in this issue. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896648.aspx

DiskExt demonstrates the use of the IOCTL_VOLUME_GET_VOLUME_DISK_EXTENTS command that returns information about what disks the partitions of a volume are located on (multipartition disks can reside on multiple disks) and where on the disk the partitions are located.

MEANING :  

This utility maps logical hardware device paths (\Device\Harddisk#\Partition #) to drive letter !!!

Download latest DiskExt(40 KB)

Download and unzip to c:\windows directory. 

Run command line command line as administrator. 

At Run, type CMD and use Ctrl+Shift + Enter to run as Administrator. 

Type diskext and you should see:   >>> Disk 1 is mapped to C:\ drive <<<