What are Bad Sectors and How to Fix Bad Sectors in Hard Drive?

Summary: This blog offers a detailed-oriented tutorial about The Worst Enemy for Your Digital Data— Hard Drive Bad Sectors. With a hands-on tutorial, you can clear your apprehensions about Bad Sectors in Hard Drive. It speaks about its causes, types, effects, and solution. Read on to know more. If you’ve lost data due to hard drive damage and you wish to recover deleted files back, then download the free demo version of Stellar Data Recovery Software and scan your affected drive and preview the recovered files for free.

In this digitized environment, Hard Drive Damage, Data Loss, and Data Recovery are some keywords. Several reasons back the loss or damage circumstance. Among those extensive options, Bad Sectors is also one of the reasons for Hard Drive Failure. Bad Sectors in Hard drives is one of the most common forms of Hard Drive Damage. The significant impact of these sectors is the creation of a data loss scenario. However, the best thing is that there are solutions to cater to Data Loss.

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What is the Hard Drive Sector?

Hard Drive sectors are small sections of the magnetic media surface. They hold tiny information chunks and represent how data is stored on the Hard Drives. In Older versions, there are 512 bytes, while in the Modern version, there are 4096 Bytes. Usually, it saves the data in fragments form.

How Do These Sectors Go Bad?

In general, the Hard Drive Sectors Go bad due to wear and tear. Adding more, other common causes include manufacturer defects, direct physical damage, and some software errors.

About Bad Sectors in Hard Drive?

When tiny clusters of defective storage space or a sector that takes a long time to access is a Bad sector.  We can also say that it is a sector that is no longer readable or writable and has been compromised. It is a potential source of Hard Drive damage. In the case of bad sectors, a user cannot access data fragments properly.

Bad Sectors Types

Majorly, two categories of Bad Sectors are available. These two types are as follows:

• Physical or Hard Bad Sectors
• Logical or Soft Bad Sectors

Physical or Hard Bad Sectors

These Bad sectors are physically damaged storage clusters on the Hard Drive and turn storage clusters in the form of a fixed magnetic state. All types of reading and write operations execution get inhibited. Neither OS nor disk controller can access them. You can prevent these Bad sectors, but cannot repair them.

Logical or Soft Bad Sectors

These Bad sectors are a storage cluster that does not appear to function correctly.  For both OS and Disk Controller software, these sectors are inaccessible. These sectors occur when the sector found Error Correction Code does not go in sync with the Sector content. In this case, mainly hard drive formatting wears out. You can repair these bad sectors by overwriting zeros on everything on the disk.

Bad Sectors Causes

With continuous usage, hard drives tend to get rough as well as losses its magnetic nature. This results in failure. Besides that, certain other factors lead to the generation of both Physical and Logical Sectors which are as follows:

• Over-ageing: Inevitably, after a particular span of the time, over-ageing is bad for every electronic device. The reason being, after a stipulated time frame, these devices continue to fail and eventually degrades. Similarly, with the hard drive case; it starts failing so its parts like platters.
• Overheating: Another standard issue. Whether you are using the new or old Hard Drive, it will fail or get damaged if there is overheating.
• File System Error: File System Errors is defined as one of the major Bad Sectors cause. The impact of this cause is that it not only makes it inaccessible but it makes it permanently damaged and non-recoverable.

Symptoms of Hard Drive Bad Sectors

• Hanging
• Freezing
• Undesirable shutdown
• Cryptic error messages
• Inaccessible or Corrupt files and folders
• Too much time consumption by the system for loading, shutting down or rebooting

Data Recovery from Bad Sectors

Identifying and Repair Methods

Broadly speaking, there are several simple and effective Digital Data Recovery methods using which you can test as well as fix drives and data integrity in a seamless manner. Few of them are as follows:

• Backup
  This is the most common and simple approach. The reason being, multiple copies helps you to ensure protection against hard drive’s data running. Therefore, if one copy fails, the other can be used.
• Error Checking
  An approach in which drive files and folders are thoroughly scanned as well as searched to identify corrupt files and inconsistencies. And the benefit of this option is to clean up basic file problems that cause data issues. Further, if the error still keeps occurring while performing the Error Checking, this indicates proliferating bad sectors or a dying drive.
• Surface Scan
  In this approach, each disk sector is thoroughly examined for bad sectors identification as well as marking. With hands on this option, bad sectors areas can easily be marked off-limits to the file system. Adding more, spare sectors can assign to replace them. Though a bit lengthy process, however, this is the only non-destructive option for bad sectors mapping out.
• SMART diagnostics Test
  It is a Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology. It queries the drive’s internal SMART information for the current status. This indicates the physical well-being of the drive at the present scenario.
• Built-in Disk Utilities
  This is yet another effective method. In this, we scan hard drives for bad sectors. It repairs the soft bad sectors and marks hard bad sectors as bad.
• Software Approach
  This is one of the best and efficient approach to recover data from hard drive with bad sectors, and also DIY software is reliable to recover lost data, accidentally deleted data, inaccessible data, formatted data from hard disk, etc.
  One such well-known data recovery software with all powerful features is Stellar Data Recovery software, also the software is 100% safe to use and works in easy steps.

Steps to recover data from hard drive with bad sectors:

• Download and run Stellar Data Recovery on your system.
  
• From the main screen, select the data type to be recovered and select Next.
  
• Next, from next screen select location from where you want to recover data i.e. your affected hard drive and hit scan.
  
• Now, wait for scanning to be completed, when scanning is done, a list of recovered files will appear, select them and preview them before saving.
  
• After preview, select the ones which you want to recover and save them at desired location.

Inevitably, all these above methods work pretty well in a Logical Failure scenario. However, what if the Hard Disk is Physically Damaged? To combat it, the Data Recovery Service is a perfect option.

If a recommendation of the best Data Recovery Service Provider is to be given, then go for Stellar Data Recovery Service Provider. Furthermore, It is tried, tested, and approved a solution.

About Stellar Data Recovery Service Provider Benefits

Stellar Data Recovery Service Provider is an industry name in Data Recovery, Data Migration and Data Erasure spanning over two decades. They have been diligently catering to the varying needs of their wide clientele in a hassle-free manner. They are accredited for the following:

• Class 100 Clean Room Recovery Lab
• Industry-best Data Encryption techniques
• State-of-the-art Biometric Control infrastructure
• ISO 27001:3013 certified
• No Recovery, No Charge* policy
• Free doorstep drive pickup service
• Data Destruction assurance using proprietary tools

 How to Prevent Bad Sectors?

• Ensure to keep the system dust-free and cool
• Ensure to use branded hardware
• Keep Data Cables as short as possible
• Make sure to shut down the system properly
• Try  to use uninterrupted Power supply mode

Also Read: Best Software to Monitor Health of Hard Drive

The Way Forward

Bad Sectors are just like others, another common reason for the Hard Drive Failure. One can encounter it anytime. Therefore, one should always back up their data on a regular basis to avoid such conditions.

Frequently Asked Questions

Ques: Can I remove bad sectors permanently?

Ans: If your hard drive having logical bad sectors, then you can repair them using the CHKDSK command.  But in case of physical bad sectors, you cannot repair them; also you can face the data loss situation.

Que: How to copy data from Bad Sector hard drive?

Ans: Copying data from a bad sector hard drive is difficult. However, you can check if the hard drive is showing and allowing you to copy data. If you are able to do so then your data is safe. Else, understand that your hard drive has physical failure.