Can I repartition my hard disk to remove CRC errors?

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Summary: Repartitioning is not an effective way to deal with CRC errors or bad sectors. At best repartitioning will only hide or delay the error.

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Unfortunately, while changing the partitioning on your hard drive can make it seem like a bad sector has disappeared, it hasn't. All it has done is rearranged things so that if you don't run across the error soon, you'll almost certainly run across it later.

Put more bluntly: repartitioning will not fix bad sectors.

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Partitioning, like formatting, is nothing more than a process that arranges information on your hard disk in a certain way. Specifically, partitioning is an approach that takes a single physical disk, and breaks it into "logical" partitions that look like individual disks.

Here's what that means:

First, a single 320GB disk with C: as a single 320GB partition:

Now, let's look at that same, single, 320GB drive, but this time partitioned in two: an 80GB C: and a 240GB D:

In fact, you can keep going if you like:

Partitioning is not at all uncommon as a way to manage hard disk space, and how it's used.

The key, though, is that partitioning is nothing more than a way to arrange data on the hard drive. It actually doesn't do anything physical to the drive, other than writing specific data that tells the operating system where the partitions start and end.

A bad sector, however, is most often a physical error.

I'll take each of those three disks above, and put a indicate a physical error on each with a red dot:

The bad sector remains in the same place on the physical disk, but where it shows up - drive C:, D: or E: in the examples above will vary depending on how the disk was partitioned.

But it's still there.

Regardless of how the disk is partitioned, there are two approaches to try to fix them:

• Run the Windows Command-line tool CHKDSK /R (for "Recover") on the partition that shows the error. (Hence, C:, D: or E: respectively using the three example images above). This is one area where partitioning can save you just a little time: the C: partition cannot be CHKDSK'ed while your system is running - you must reboot so that CHKDSK can run before Windows starts up. Other partitions can typically be CHKDSK'ed at any time.

• Run a more in-depth tool like SpinRite. If CHKDSK /R can't recover a bad sector, it's possible that SpinRite can. You'll need to weigh the cost of SpinRite against, perhaps, the cost of a new drive, since drives are so inexpensive these days, but it's often worth it in the time and hassle savings alone.

But as you can see, repartitioning to actually fix the bad sector isn't on the list; it won't help.

Related:

• What is disk partitioning? Partitions are ways of treating a single hard disk as if it were many. We'll look at why, how and when you might want to partition your hard drive.

• How do I fix errors on my hard disk? Hard disk errors come from several different sources, and as a result there are several different approaches to resolving them.

• How do I fix a cyclic redundancy check error when I try to copy a file? CRC errors happen when there's a bad spot on the media of your hard disk. Data recovery and disk repair are often possible with the right tools.

Article C3873 - September 19, 2009