Bad sector repair software

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 overview

A 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 sectors

Physical 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 sectors

Logical 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 PartitionGuru.

Signs that hard drive has bad sectors

Hard 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.

• ŸDrive becomes RAW and inaccessible. When you try to access it, you receive error messages such as "Location is not available. Drive: \ is not accessible. 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. information. 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 sectors

Sectors 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.

• ŸŸAging 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 software

Is 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.

PartitionGuru Free

PartitionGuru Free is freeware which is compatible with all Windows editions and enables you to find out whether hard disk has errors. 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 PartitionGuru:

As we all know, bad sector repairing damages data, thus you should backup or recover data beforehand. PartitionGuru Free provides data backup and data recovery features, thus you can back up important data and save lost data, such as clone damaged disk, create a sector-level image for disk / partition, recover data from RAW drive or unallocated disk, restore lost partitions, etc.

How to check bad sectors using free bad sector repair software?

Step 1  Start this bad sector repair and detect software and right click the disk that needs detecting bad sectors, and then select the item "Verify or Repair Bad Sectors", as below:

Step 2  Click the button "Start Verify" on the interface bad track verification and then PartitionGuru starts to perform a surface scanning to find bad sectors. Before you get started, you can set timeout value or scanning cylinder range by entering exact value. If you are not an expert and have no ideas about these settings, you can just follow default value.

Step 3  While verifying bad sectors, PartitionGuru displays detailed information of hard drive sectors. Sectors marked by red blocked means damaged, and these are bad sectors. Severe does not mean bad sector, but it is not in good condition.

Step 4  When scanning completes, PartitionGuru reports how many bad sectors are found. You can click "Save Report" button to save the scanning result.

How to repair bad sectors using free bad sector repair tool?

Checking bad sector is read-only process and does not affect disk itself or files on hard drive, but repairing bad sector does not. Before trying any bad sector repairing solution, make sure you have a good backup of your files on the damaged disk, as repair action probably result in the loss of files or corruption of file system.
Important
The bad sector repair destroys data on the disk; more exactly, it destroys data on bad sectors or near bad sectors. Thus, you need to back up data before the bad sector repair. It is common that the disk can't read data due to bad sectors, and in such a condition, you need to recover data first instead of doing the bad sector repair.

Step 1  Click "Repair" button if you want to repair bad sectors on the "Bad Track Verification" window.

Step 2  You'll receive a warning that asks to back up data first. If you have created a backup for important data, click "OK" button. If not, click "Cancel" and backup your files.

Step 3  Another warning message from PartitionGuru, which tells repairing bad sectors does not equal to recovering files and you should recover data first. Click "OK" if file recovery is not needed. If you want to recover data, you should click "Cancel" and use "File Recovery" function to scan the disk to find lost data.

Step 4  When the repairing process complete you'll receive following message. Click "OK" button and close the software.

Please note that not all bad sectors are repairable such as physical bad sectors. If PartitionGuru cannot repair all bad sectors on your hard drive, you can isolate bad sectors by creating a partition on the disk area that contains bad sectors and hiding the partition with the help of PartitionGuru.

More on bad sectors

One of the reasons is that hard disk has bad sectors when it is manufactured; experienced data recovery engineers know which disk is likely to have bad sectors judging by its brand, manufactured time, working hours, etc. Another reason is the improper operations such as unduly defragment.
Fix bad sectors timely and use the disk with cautious
It'll become a vicious circle if you don't fix bad sectors timely, because that may cause more bad sectors. Therefore, you'd better detect bad sectors regularly and do bad sector repair timely. Meanwhile, though bad sectors are fixed, the disk is more risky of getting bad sectors than normal ones. So you should be cautious when you use a disk that had bad sectors before and do not save important data on it. The logical bad sector can be fixed, while the physical bad sectors can't be repaired, but usually they can be remapped. Bad sector repair and detect software can detect bad sectors, repair logical bad sectors and remap physical bad sectors.

Low-level formatting (LLF) and bad sector repair
Low-level formatting can be used to fix server bad sectors. However, the low-level formatting is a double-edged sword; it can fix bad sectors as well as do hard to hard disk, especially when the hard disk has physical bad sectors. Thus the low-level formatting is the last choice of bad sector repair.

Bad sector and new disk
It is barely known that when a hard disk is manufactured, there are areas on the platter that have bad sectors! These bad sectors, hidden in P-LIST and G-LIST, won't affect normal use and they can't be accessed by common software either. G-LIST can store several hundred bad sectors and the P-LIST can store about four thousand bad sectors. For more information about G-LIST and P-List, please read related articles. One thing to note if your hard drive contains irreparable bad sectors, it is not advised to store importance data on that disk for data security reasons.