How to Fix a Bad Cluster Hard Drive Program

Bad clusters can be caused by many factors, including system crash, disk defects, other faulty hardware components and malware.

A bad or lost cluster or sector on a computer's hard disk drive is an area of the disk that cannot be used due to being marked as damaged. Bad sectors and lost clusters on a hard drive can significantly slow down a drive's performance. Many modern disk drives can "remap" a bad area of the hard drive to a working area so the drive knows not to write information over the bad cluster. A program such as ChkDsk (a utility that comes with Microsoft Windows) can be used to try to recover or remap bad clusters.

Things You'll Need

• Microsoft Windows

Instructions

1. Click the "Start" button in the bottom left corner of your Microsoft Windows desktop, then click "Run."

2. Type "cmd" into the available text field in the Run dialog box. Click the "OK" button. A command prompt window will open that allows you to run DOS-based programs.

3. Type "chkdsk /r" into the command prompt. A message telling the user that ChkDsk cannot run because the volume is in use will display. Press "Y" on the keyboard to schedule the program to run at the next system restart. Press ENTER.

4. Close the command prompt window by clicking the "X" in the top right corner. Close any programs that you have open.

5. Click the "Start" button, click "Turn Off Computer," then choose "Restart" from the system shutdown menu. The computer will restart and the ChkDsk program will run prior to the Windows startup process. Any bad clusters or lost sectors that can be recovered or remapped will be fixed during the disk-checking process.

References

• iAfrica: Hard Drive Data Corruption
• Microsoft Support: How to Perform Disk Error Checking in Windows XP

Resources

• iAfrica: Hard Drive Data Corruption Causes