How to Fix Bad Sectors on a Hard Disk

The minute your computer's hard disk starts to act flaky, make sure you have an up-to-date backup. Then you can do some simple diagnostics and repairs. Both Windows and Mac OS come with built-in hard-disk utility software that scans your hard disk for errors and attempts to fix them.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

For Windows

1. Double-click on My Computer to open the My Computer window.

2. Select the disk that you want to diagnose and repair.

3. Choose Properties from the File menu. You should see the Properties window for the drive that you selected.

4. Choose the Tools tab.

5. Click the Check Now button under Error Checking Status.

6. Depending on your version of Windows, choose either "Thorough" or "Scan for and Attempt Recovery of Bad Sectors."

7. Click on Start.

Tips & Warnings

• Third-party hard-disk utilities do a more thorough job of diagnosis and repair than the software that comes with Windows or Mac OS, but they work much better if you install them before you have a problem.
• Third-party hard-disk utilities do a more thorough job of diagnosis and repair than the software that comes with Windows or Mac OS, but they work much better if you install them before you have a problem.

[rifdaddy]

on 9/4/2009 Then you are left to download acronis and backup your harddrive to another drive if possible http://www.fukkiit.com

[daveonator]

on 8/1/2009 If a sector is marked bad on a drive than that sector is considered permanently damaged normally due to physical damage. At that point, there's not a software tool in the world that will fix the physical damage. When the sector is marked bad the disk tool (SCANDISK or CHECKDISK) remaps that sector to another sector on the hard disk. At that point ever time the drive is told to read from that sector it has to refer to another sector working harder, which can eventually degrade the disk even faster over time. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_sectors, 2009)

To simply make an image via Acronis (Ghost, Xto backup your data and restore it would only restore the bad sector references to the new drive (even if the new drive doesn't have bad sectors) unless you use the partition resize option in Acronis. (http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=130446, 2009)

However there are t...

[density5]

on 1/2/2009 the best site i have found for hdd repair software is the http://hddguru.com/ website.

[density5]

on 1/2/2009 i use alot of hard drive utilities on the http://hddguru.com/ website.

[blockerm]

on 12/28/2008 The real answer is...if you see bad sectors then you have to buy a new hard drive. In the end, solutions like that mentioned above will mark the sectors as bad but once this starts happening, the disk is bound to fail. Use the utility to recover the sectors, back up to a secondary hard drive, then use a utility like Acronis to copy the disk (if possible) to a new hard drive. If not, reinstall the os and copy your files over from the backup. Cheers