Let’s first define what faulty sectors are on a hard disk before attempting to repair them.
Data is stored on platters, which are spinning discs coated with a thin layer of magnetic material. Each platter is separated into circular tracks, which are then broken down into individual sectors. A sector is the smallest unit of physical storage capacity on a hard drive; older hard drives store 512 bytes in each sector, whereas modern drives can store 4 kilobytes of data using the Advanced Format (AF).
A set of actuator heads floats above the platters as they spin. The actuator heads read and write magnetic charges on the sectors before sending the data to your computer.
Sectors, on the other hand, can become unreliable with time. When the computer classifies a sector as permanently damaged, it becomes a “bad sector.” The sector has been useless, and all data contained within has been lost. Some files may become corrupt if a hard drive has a large number of faulty sectors.
Hard drive sectors deteriorate as a result of normal wear and tear. Manufacturer faults, direct physical damage, and some software mistakes are also prevalent causes. It’s split into two sections.
Sectors that are physically demanding or difficult to work in: These Bad sectors are physically damaged storage clusters on the Hard Drive that have been turned into a fixed magnetic state. The execution of all reading and writing activities is slowed. They are inaccessible to neither the operating system nor the disk controller. You can prevent faulty sectors from forming, but you can’t fix them.
Sectors that are logical or soft are bad sectors: These bad sectors are storage clusters that don’t seem to be working properly. These sectors are unavailable to both the OS and the Disk Controller software. These sectors appear when the Error Correction Code detected in the sector does not match the content of the sector. Overwriting zeros on the entire disk can be used to repair these faulty sectors.
Causes of Bad Sectors: Continuous use causes hard disks to become rough and lose their magnetic properties.
- Over-aging: After a certain period of time, every electronic gadget suffers from over-aging. The reason for this is that these gadgets continue to malfunction and degrade after a certain amount of time has passed.
- Another common problem is overheating: If your hard drive overheats, it will fail or be damaged, regardless of whether it is new or old.
- File System Error: One of the most common causes of faulty sectors is file system errors. The influence of this cause renders it not only unavailable but also permanently ruined and irreversible.
Your hard disk or external storage devices may have faulty sectors if you experience one of the following symptoms:
- When booting or running a hard drive, there is a strange friction sound.
- The system displays an error message such as “Sector not found” or “General error in reading drive C,” among other things.
- The disk will not format and will return an error.
- When the machine boots up, Scandisk (a diagnostic application) starts automatically.
- Some operations become stalled or random in a given procedure.
Formatting a hard disk will not “repair” faulty sectors, but it will designate them as bad (unusable), preventing any data from being written to them.
The Windows CHKDSK command can be used to permanently fix damaged sectors on a hard disk.
However, before repairing the drive, all of the data must be recovered using a professional software application such as.
You can completely format the disk after using the Command Prompt to fix it. You can reclaim the hard drive sector that was previously unavailable or corrupted in this manner.
You can use these procedures to format faulty sectors on your hard disk and fix them.
- Select the drive you want to wipe in Windows Explorer. Right-click and select “Format” from the drop-down menu.
- It will launch a separate pop-up window where you can change the partition table design or select the file system (such as FAT or NTFS). To wipe the drive, click the “Format” button.
You can also use the Disk Management program found under Control Panel > Computer Management to format the disk.
Select the partition, right-click, and select “Format” from the drop-down menu. You can now proceed to format the hard drive.
