Bad Blocks - how to fix bad sectors
Table of Contents
1. Bad Blocks? |
Bad Blocks on your Drive?
Bad sectors are also called bad blocks, which usually appear on hard disk drive, flash drive, memory card, usb disk etc. How? A hard disk works like a road, when there is too much traffic everyday, soon or later, it would become damaged. There are two types of bad blocks - logical damaged (soft) bad sectors and physical damaged (hard) bad blocks. Some symptoms of bad sectors on your drive:
- Errors like "Sector not found" or "General error in reading drive C" when system cannot boot with virus affection excluded
- Cannot format error "Windows cannot format this drive"
- Cannot finish FDISK command
- Weird sound from the hard disk
- Blue screen of death
- It takes very long when you open a file or a program, and your hard disk repeatly read the disk blocks and reported error
Logical bad blocks are easy to repair while physical damaged sectors are hard to restore.
Tutorial: You may follow this guide to repair bad sectors
Bad blocks usually refer to the damaged areas on a computer hard disk drive. When a disk drive has bad blocks, data stored inside the disk drive will get lost and is unrecoverable when it is stored to the bad sectors. It is impossible to fix bad blocks on a hard disk drive, so if you find bad blocks on your disk drive you had better store the data to somewhere else. When you find there are bad blocks on disk drive, it indicates not only some bad sectors can’t be used; it will also affect the whole disk drive. Therefore, once your disk drive has bad blocks the disk drive won’t be used for a long time. If you still want to store data to the hard disk, you can make a backup of important data to protect yourself from data loss.
What Should You Do When There Is Bad Blocks on Your Disk Drive
Some users note that the bad blocks disappear after low level formatting of the hard disk. As a matter of fact, formatting can’t fix the bad blocks on a hard disk drive. But low level formatting can delete all the partitions in the disk drive and hide the bad block. It means that low level formatting only make the bad blocks hidden and when you store data to the hard disk it won’t store to the bad blocks. To some extent, this method can protect the data stored inside the hard drive safe. However, the more times you perform a low level formatting, the more bad blocks there will be on your hard disk drive. Besides, lots of software online or on the market can also help your hide the bad blocks.
What Can Cause Bad Blocks
Bad blocks on disk drive can be caused by many reasons including the quality of hard disk drive and the
maintenance of hard disk. Some common reasons are as below:
* There is general surface wear on hard disk drive or there is dust inside.
* Improper shutdown of Windows.
* Improper operation of the disk drive.
* Other poor quality or aging hardware, including a bad processor fan, dodgy data cables, an overheated hard
drive
How Can You Know There Are Bad Blocks on Your Disk Drive
* Read / Write error on your hard disk when you read a file or run some program.
* Hard drive makes Weird Noises
* Your hard disk is not infected with virus, but Windows prompts "Sector not found" or "General
error in reading drive C" etc.
* "Windows was unable to complete the format" error when you perform a formatting of your
disk.
If your hard disk meets any problem above, it means your hard disk has bad blocks.
Related with RAW Drive
Recover deleted data after formatting
The tips and software to recover data after format and it works with hard disk drive, memory card, cellphone etc.
Recover photos, videos from memory card like sd xd cf etc.
References
RAW problem on a forum : similar user who has raw problem on their disk
What is RAW file system : tips and method to fix raw problem on disk, card, usb