Hard Drive Repair
This article is devoted to explaining bad sectors and free bad sector repair tool, and introducing how to check and repair bad sectors using bad sector repair software. Bad sector can occur on all storage devices like hard drives, external HDD, flash drives and SSDs. A few bad sectors do not indicate that hard drive is surely to fail, as some bad sectors can be repaired successfully. There is no need to be panic when your hard drive contains bad sectors, you should always keep calm and follow this guide to get them repaired. Bad sector overviewA bad sector is a sector on a computer's disk that cannot be used due to permanent damage (or an OS inability to successfully access it), such as physical damage to the disk surface (or sometimes sectors being stuck in a magnetic or digital state that cannot be reversed) or failed flash memory transistors.
Something weird will happen if the hard disk has bad sectors, for instance, operating system can't boot normally; hard disk can't be formatted; when you open a file, error is reported. These phenomena show that there must be bad sectors on the disk. In fact, it is very common that disk used for a long time has bad sectors. There are two types of bad sectors – physical (hard) and logical (soft) bad sector.Physical / hard bad sectorsPhysical bad sectors are a cluster of sectors of the hard drive that are physically damaged.
If hard drive's head touches the rotating plater, that area will be damaged. For example, if your computer is bumped while its hard drive is writing data, hard disk is exposed to extreme heat, or some mechanical part fails, all these are likely to cause hard bad sectors. As to solid-state drive, bad sectors are the result of worn out flash memory cell or other defects.
This type of bad sector cannot be repaired, but it can be prevented.Logical / soft bad sectorsLogical bad sectors are sectors on hard drive that appear to not be working properly. When operating system tries to read or write data stored on these sectors and finds error correction code (ECC) which does not match content of the sector, that indicates that something is wrong and these sectors may be tagged as bad sectors. Soft bad sectors are repairable by overwriting on disk with zeros, which can be done by bad sector repair software such as DiskGenius.Signs that hard drive has bad sectorsHard disk might be one of the most fragile hardware among computer components. If not taken proper care, data would be at the risk of loss.
Likewise everything else, hard drive bad sectors give signs and symptoms. If you know the warning signs beforehand, you have a good chance to prevent disaster. Let's look at some signs telling hard disk probably contains bad sectors.
Drive becomes RAW and inaccessible. When you try to access it, you receive error messages such as 'Location is not available. Drive: is not accessible.
Hard Drive Repair Program
Data error (cyclic redundancy check)'. It takes a long time to run a program or read data. Computers slows down or freezes when the damaged hard drive in connected. Hard drive makes strange noises when computer boots or you try to access data in this disk.
When you want to perform a quick format to the device, formatting fails with error message 'Windows was unable to complete the format'. Windows keeps popping up a messaging telling 'Windows detected a hard disk problem' and suggesting backing up data. Windows slows down and BSOD. Computer takes ages to start up or system booting always ends up with a blue screen of death.
S.M.A.R.T. There are tools that can read S.M.A.R.T. Data of hard drive. If it show the hard drive is failing, the disk is likely to have bad sectors.Causes of bad sectorsSectors on hard drive can easily get damaged due to all kinds of reasons. Bad sectors are no longer available for data storage and cause data loss most of times. To prevent bad sectors, you need to know the most common reasons behind it.
Here we'll discuss this topic. Aging device: Like other electronic devices, hard drive has an expected life span. If your hard drive has been used for a long time, it is likely to be wearing out and bad sectors might have been created over time. Turn off computer improperly: Platters in hard drive rotate in a high speed when working, as heads have to read data from different location on the disk.
When sudden power failure or improper system shutdown happens, heads in hard drive will be forced to back to situ. During this process, head is likely to touch or rub disk platters, damaging that area and causing bad sectors.
In a similar way, if external hard drive is unplugged from computer directly without using safely removing hardware, bad sectors are likely to be caused. Shaking or knocking: Though many manufacturers have tried their best to enable to enable the shock-resistant function, it doesn't mean you no longer need to worry about shacking or striking. Dropping hard drive or laptop to floor, excessive collision or knocking, especially when disk is working, can lead to severe physical bad sectors.
Poor quality: Hard drives with low quality tend to have shorter overall lifespan and develop bad sectors. Such kind of hard drive probably contains bad sectors when it is produced. Dust: Dust is one of the most common causes that are often overlooked by users.
As heads are very close to disk platters, if any dust falls into the disk, bad sectors will occur soon.Free bad sector repair softwareIs it possible to check or repair bad sectors on hard drive and USB drives? The answer is YES. There are bad sector check and repair tools online, and you can download one of them to help you perform a surface scanning. Besides, it is still possible to recover files from a damaged hard drive caused by bad sectors. Let's see a free bad sector repair tool together.DiskGeniusDiskGenius is a freeware which is compatible with all Windows editions and enables you to find out whether hard disk has errors.
Hard Drive Repairing
It is able to check and repair bad sectors for hard drives and other storage devices. Meanwhile, it is free partition manager and data recovery freeware, which is trusted and recommended by millions of users. The following screenshot is the main interface of DiskGenius:As we all know, bad sector repairing damages data, thus you should backup or recover data beforehand.