▷ How to repair bad sectors on the hard drive

In this article we will talk about what are bad sectors and how to easily try to repair them. The appearance of bad sectors is one of the most common problems in traditional hard drives.

When such a situation occurs, data stored on bad sectors can often be lost, but the remaining data on disk will not be affected . In fact, we can mark them as unusable so that the operating system does not try to store data about them. Above all, the disk is still in the functional state. Prepared? Let's start!

Index of contents

What is a bad sector and how to repair it

In simple words, a bad sector is a section on the hard drive that becomes inaccessible. This small faulty pool of storage space will not respond to any read or write requests. They are of two types: one that results from a software error and the other from physical damage. This means that they can be caused both by problems with the Windows file system and by reasons of physical damage to the drive. In the first case, the recovery of the sectors is possible, while in the second it is much more complicated.

In the event of physical damage, the hard drive head may have touched and damaged that part of the hard drive, dust may have accumulated in that sector and ruined it, or the hard drive may have had other defects or problems. of wear that caused the sector to be physically damaged. A logical or bad sector is a storage group on the hard disk that does not appear to function properly. The operating system may have attempted to read the data on the hard drive in this sector and found that the error correction code (ECC) does not match the content of the sector, suggesting something is wrong. These can be marked as bad sectors, but can be repaired by overwriting the drive.

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There are scenarios where the cause of bad sectors could be a bad drive head. In such cases, there is a possibility of spreading the problem to other sectors of the disk. Therefore, in situations where the hard drive experiences one or more bad sectors, it is highly recommended to backup the disk or fix bad sectors instantly.

What are the signs that indicate bad sectors on the hard drive?

The following are the common signs and symptoms that indicate bad sectors on a hard drive:

• Generation of strange noises at startup, especially at the time of reading / writing and opening of the hard disk drive Generation of error message: files get corrupted when executing a program or reading a file The system is very time consuming to run a program or read a file. System that shows a blue screen When your system displays a warning message such as "General error reading drive C" or "Sector not found", even if it is not attacked by a virus When Windows does not complete the hard drive format, both fast and full When the system every time when it starts, it automatically runs the Scandisk to scan errors on the hard drive

How to repair bad sectors from Windows

If you notice any of the symptoms indicated above, you should repair the bad sectors immediately for security and data integrity reasons. Let's see now how to repair bad sectors on a hard drive:

Go to My Computer to see all the hard drives.

Select the drive you want to repair and right-click on the drive, then click Properties. In the Tools tab you will find the error checking utility.

Confirm the operation by clicking.

After that Windows will scan the hard disk for bad sectors. It will surely ask you to reboot the system in order to solve them. Once Windows has finished it will inform you if there are defective sectors on your hard drive, after which it will give you the option to repair them.

When a hard disk appears with bad sectors, the information contained in them becomes inaccessible. As long as the number of bad sectors does not increase, the data is safe and can be easily recovered. On the other hand, if it increases, then recovery becomes essential. Therefore, it is recommended to remove bad sectors at the initial stage to avoid data loss.

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This ends our article on how to repair bad sectors of the hard drive, remember to share it on social networks so that it can help more users who need it, since it is something that can be very useful for any user who has a hard drive.

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