Are Bad Blocks on a Hard Drive Fixable?
Bad blocks happen when there is physical damage to the hard disk. It is not possible to actually "fix" a bad block, but you can tell the disk to ignore them.
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Block Definition
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A block is a physical unit of fixed size within a hard drive that is used to store data. Block are commonly 512 bytes and are numbered consecutively.
Bad Block Description
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A block is labeled as "bad" when the magnetic material that stores the data is physically compromised. This material cannot be repaired, but you can tell the disk not to write to that block.
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Detection
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Bad blocks are located when the disk is checked by a utility such as Scandisk in Windows or Fsck in Unix/Linux. The data on those blocks cannot be recovered, as the media holding the data has been damaged.
Bad Sector Map
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Each disk has a map of the blocks, which allows it to find the data that was written to the disk. There are low level formatting tools that will create a Bad Sector Map, which tells the disk to ignore the bad sectors.
Recovery
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Each disk manufacturer has its own low-level formatting tool used to update the Bad Sector Map. Once this low level tool has been run, you can use a high level format tool such as Format in Windows and Fdisk in Unix/Linux in order to reuse the disk.
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