Occurrence of Bad Sectors and Useful Measures for Data Recovery

What are Bad Sectors?

A hard drive has various tracks and sectors that help in its functioning and storage activity. A hard disk comprises of several tiny clusters. Each cluster contains two or more sectors. Defective sectors can hamper the overall performance of the hard disk. A hard disk containing bad sector does not respond to activities like reading, writing, data recovery or other function. Bad sectors can occur on both the types of hard drive traditional magnetic or Solid State Drive (SSD).  

Bad sectors happen due to following two reasons:

1. Physical damage 

-          Software errors

In both, the cases hard drive repair and recovery becomes nearly impossible.

Types

• Physical Bad Sector

Physical or hard bad sectors is the one that happens due to physical damage on a hard disk. This can be due to dust settling in that area, rendering it useless or the magnetic plates touch each other while reading/writing activity due to which a solid state flash memory cell might have worn out. Furthermore there are possibilities that a hard drive might have some other defects or wear issues that have caused a sector to become a physical damage.  Sometimes mechanical or manufacturing faults also cause bad sectors. In any of the case, hard drive repair or recovery is not possible in any way.

• Logical Bad Sector

Soft or logical bad sector happens when an error correction code (ECC) does not match the contents of the sector. Specifically when your computer operating system attempts to read drive data from such a sector the computer operating system detects the correcting code (ECC) which doesn’t match the sector content. Soft bad sectors are logical errors that you can fix by overwriting the existing data with zeroes. Running a low format of the partition and applying techniques like western digital recovery fixes the problem. Running windows Check Disk program also detects and fixes the problem.

Causes of Bad Sectors

Most of the times, bad physical sectors happen due to manufacturing faults. Modern manufacturing methods are not perfect and have a margin of error in their process. That slight error causes the whole shipment to become defected with bad sectors. In other instances, Overheating, ageing or file system errors become the cause of HDD bad sectors. Some common symptoms to identify bad sectors in HDD includes:

• Frequent hanging
• Freezing for a long time
• Unresponsiveness
• Unexpected shutdown
• Cryptic error messages
• Inaccessible files and folders

If you detect or experience any of these symptoms, you HDD may have developed bad sectors, and you need to take it to a hard drive repair expert. They can fix most of the bad logical sectors and make it functional for some time. The best solution is to create a backup of the data and buy a new hard drive as soon as possible.

Identification and Repair Methods

• The simplest and effective way of addressing bad sectors is to create a backup and buy a fresh HDD. While you may have your backup, an old hard drive may wear off at any moment. Create multiple copies of data to access in case of failure
• Run surface scan and error-checking tools to identify any bad sectors and determine their type
• Use SMART diagnostic tools to self-monitor all the internal information and physical well-being of a drive
• Use built-in operating system disk utilities or have a data recovery expert run suitable software for recovery and repair

Final Word

Having bad sectors on your hard disk is a matter of concern for any user. However, you can identify the issue early by having a scheduled disk-checking feature in function. Moreover, if you detect any slowness in response or unexpected booting, take your disk to a hard disk repair professional. They have the expertise and resources to identify and clear any bad sectors accordingly. In case of soft bad sectors there is a probability that you hard drive data can be fully recovered and many of the systems provide in built disk repair tools. For example in windows it is CHKDSK and on MAC it is Disk Utility. They are the essentials tools which plays a vital role in repairing soft bad sectors. Once after fixing the hard drive the can be read and written normally.

About This Author

Shaun Miller Joined: October 30th, 2020