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How do I fix a bad sector on my hard drive?

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Summary: You should try to fix bad sectors on your hard drive before trashing it. Starting with "chkdsk" may help.

I recently tested my hard drive. The test revealed that I had a sector or partion that had failed and I was told I should look at replacing the hard drive because it may be catstrophic failure and crash. Should I replace the hard drive, can I repair my exsisting drive, if I do replace it can I then do some repairs and still use a portion of the drive?

Before you replace, I always like to try for a repair. Most hard disks actually have some spare sectors they set aside for exactly this purpose.

You could get lucky and be able to save a few bucks.

On Windows XP, I'd start with a "chkdsk /R". (/R: "Locates bad sectors and recovers readable information"). Fire up a Command Prompt to run that command. You can access Command Prompt by going to Start, Programs, Accessories, and then click on Command Prompt.

Under Windows 9x (95, 98 and Me), I believe scandisk has an option to do a surface scan and repair as well.

Another highly regarded option is a product called "SpinRite" available at Gibson Research which may also do the deed.

If those options both fail you, well, new hard disks aren't that expensive these days.

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Recent Comments

how can i remove he bad sector by a boot cd

Posted by: sherif at February 12, 2008 05:12 PM

I have what I believe is a good workaround solution to bad sectors on a HD. I just finished doing it to my 40Gb Quantum HD, which previously was so filled with bad sectors that I could not reinstall Windows, and it is now working flawlessly! Here is my solution: 1. Run a surface scan on the HD to determine where, EXACTLY, the bad sectors are located. Use a program like "Partition Table Disk Doctor"; it found all the bad sectors on my drive were located in 3 seperate areas from cylinder 0 through cylinder 1063. 2. Note the locations of the bad sectors. 3. Partition your HD. (I suggest you use a program like Acronis Disk Director; it will give you the flexibilty and HD information that you will need more so than simple Fdisk.) Make one partition that covers up to and a little bit past the point where the bad sectors were reported. (In my case, that was an 8Gb partition that ran from cylinder 0 to cylinder 1063.) Then make another partition in the area that is NOT affected by the bad sectors. THIS is the one you're going to set as active, format, and prepare to accept your O/S. 4. Now delete the first partition, the one with all the bad sectors on it. Doing so will turn it into "unallocated space". MAKE NO ATTEMPT TO USE THIS SPACE ANY LONGER! Yes, you may have to lose a few gigabytes of space, but it's worth it to have your PC working well again. As I said at the start, this is the method I used that got my HD running perfectly! I hope it helps someone.

Posted by: OMH at March 16, 2008 06:37 PM

i use external 2.5 HD, and i receive this cylinder error when i try to open or copy most of files, but when i do scan my hard disk, it didn't show any error/Bad sector on it. what could it be???????

Posted by: Heickel at April 29, 2008 04:21 AM

i use external 2.5 HD, and i receive this cylinder error when i try to open or copy most of files, but when i do scan my hard disk, it didn't show any error/Bad sector on it. what could it be???????

Posted by: raja at May 24, 2008 01:07 PM

I have 3 Seagate drives,
The first hard drive is where I installed Windows since six years ago, it never had bad sectors problem.

The second and the third I bought 1 years ago.
The second now has 173 bad sectors but the third is ok.

The really weird thing is I don't have any bad sectors in my second hard drive even it is has 173 bad sectors.

I wonder what causing it?

Posted by: Melina Putri at June 1, 2008 12:25 PM

Dear All,
I have an IDE hard drive; recently the windows alert me that there are some bad sectors in your hard drive and you need to fix the problem.
I went and buy a new HDD to replace and copy all information from the older to the newer.
Unfortunately after starting the PC I saw that the computer did not recognize my OLD storage.
I hear some noise for awhile after starting the computer from inside of hard and the noise stops.
Somebody offers me to recover my data by paying considerable money payment.
Has somebody encountered with similar problem?
Could you guide me how can I handle this problem probably using software solutions?

Posted by: Zoroufi at June 9, 2008 04:16 PM

hello sir,
iam using 40gb seagate harddisk it was detecting but when iam installing windows xp it was not displaying the any hard drives y..........
plz reply me sir.....

Posted by: premchander at June 9, 2008 06:21 PM

Hello
I am using a 500gb Seagate hard disk. I don't want to lose anything but if I have to I will. I'm pretty sure it has bad sectors and I can't install Windows again.(Vista) It won't find it. It finds it in the start up, like the page that is black and has white words but when I try to install a clean copy it can't find the hard drive. What could I do? Please help me.

Posted by: Jose at June 23, 2008 07:04 PM

try to change system from ntfs to fat system and vice versa,

Posted by: justin marcus at June 25, 2008 10:59 PM

Hi
Im trying to fix my hard drive from bad sectors but when I try to fix it on startup its starts to check and then it says it has encounterd and error and stops working. Help me please.

Posted by: Jose at July 3, 2008 12:50 PM

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