Is there a way to fix a bad sector of the hardisk?
By rhya08it
@rhya08it (87)
Philippines
April 3, 2010 8:39am CST
guys can you recommend a sofware that can fix a bad sector of a hardisk? if there is? thnaks.
i need it badly.
8 responses
@jithinpg (87)
• India
3 Apr 10
You cannot do anything with physical damages on a disk. The bad sector may be caused by dust sticking onto platters of the disk or a scratch which might have caused due to the R/W head rubbing on the surface of platters.
You can prevent the Operating system from writing onto bad sectors by using several methods. You can use CHKDSK with /F and /R options to perform a full 5 step Disk check with automatic repair of disk errors(In Microsoft Windows Platforms).
There are several other third party tools which also do the same in filesystem level including DiskManager(DM), Norton Disk Doctor(NDD) etc.
If it is a severe physical damage, you might replace your harddrive and recover old data from them and copy to the new one.
@jithinpg (87)
• India
10 Apr 10
Yes, CHKDSK with flags /F and /R will schedule a "Full"(5 step detailed disk checking on next reboot) disk checking and fix filesystem errors and bad sectors when found.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/160963
CHKDSK /P /R locates bad sectors and recovers readable information as per Microsoft. They haven't told anything about filesystem error fixing in ints documentation. That is why i recommended CHKDSK /F /R.
Thanks & Regards,
Jithin.
@Asylum (47893)
• Manchester, England
3 Apr 10
The bad sectors are actual damaged parts of the platter, which cannot be repaired.
The way to deal with bad sectors is to run scandisk, which will check for such flaws and isolate them. Any data previously written to a bad sector will become unreadable as soon as the sector is damaged, so it is imperative to avoid the system trying to write to it.
@kryptoscode (452)
• Philippines
3 Apr 10
There is no way to fix bad blocks on the hard drive because it's a physical scratch damage. Though you can just hide it you can use a software from the manufacturer of your drive. People has this misconception that bad blocks can be eradicated on your drive when it's not they will just hide it.What the software will do is skip the damage (bad blocks) portion of the drive does preventing the OS from writing on it.
@jithinpg (87)
• India
3 Apr 10
There is a feature in the Microsoft's NTFS filesystem known as "Self-Healing". This feature is one of the powerful features of NTFS filesystem which checks itself if any disk R/W error is found and quickly marks bad sectors inorder to prevent read/write attempts on those addresses thereby fixing fatal disk r/w errors.
Most people who are using Microsoft Windows operating systems ranging from Windows 2000 to Windows 7 must have noticed a light blue screen(Black for Vista and System 7) just before user login appearing and says "Checking disk for errors...". You can skip this disk check by pressing space or any other key.
This function can be done while logged in Windows by using CHKNTFS command in the command prompt window. You can use CHKNTFS to find out whether the disk is dirty or not(Dirty bit is set or not) and provide optional switches for autorepair. Windows will scan disk and filesystem and attempt autorepair if any errors in filesystem or disk is found otherwise the disk will not be reported dirty. Sometimes windows will repair or fix it in next system reboot.
But as i've already told in my previous reply, any of these methods cannot help recovering a disk from severe physical damage such as scratches, breaks etc. In such cases only a data recovery expert can help you in escaping useful data from the disk and copy/backup it into another media or harddisk.
@Vick77 (488)
• Mexico
3 Apr 10
You can try with this software called: HDD regenerator, here's the page:
http://www.dposoft.net/#b_hddhid
With it you can try to repair bad sectors on your HDD, it can do the repair in any file system, is a good program, could be useful to you to repair your hard drive, I hope it helps.
Good luck.
@pinhornudo (437)
• Brazil
8 Apr 10
Unfortunately, no.
Some HDs can be restored for bad sector, but its kind of expensive and rare to find someone specialist in recover of Hard Disk. But it's only useful for people who have files that can't lose.
Is sad to say, but my last HD that was with bad sector became garbage, haha.
@chaithanya3050 (269)
• India
3 Apr 10
there is no way in which we can fix the bad sectors in the hard disk
@markmoney (2868)
• Philippines
3 Apr 10
Oh, I'm sad to say but as far as I believe, bad sectors of a hard disk cannot be fixed. The only solution is to replace it with a new hard disk or if the bad sector is still minimal, you can just stay with the current one and wait until it's finally broken up. Happy myLotting!