Summary: You should try to fix bad sectors on your hard drive before trashing it. Starting with "chkdsk" may help.
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I recently tested my hard drive. The test revealed that I had a sector or partition that had failed and I was told I should look at replacing the hard drive because it may be catastrophic 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.
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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.
Related:
How can I reuse or erase a dead hard drive? Your options for what to do with a dead hard drive depend on the cause of death, and the possibility of resuscitation.
How do I fix bad sectors on a flash drive? Once a flash drive starts to show wear by having errors, you shouldn't treat it like a hard disk. You'll be much safer replacing it.
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.
Article C2239 - December 11, 2004
You can repair bad sectors permenently insted of blocking them you can regenrate bad areas sucsesfully.. by using a software called Hdd regenerator this software is a freeware and unbelievable you can easily find it on you windows crystalxp cd insert it and on boot menu go on hiren cd,s then enter on hard disk tools then on hdd regenarator it will take 1 or 2 hour to procseed if you can,t find windows crystalxp v.2 cd then search on www.google.com.pk type hdd regenarator on search bar
Posted by: Asmar at January 25, 2008 4:42 AMNorton Disk Doctor, which is a part of Symantech suite simple uses chkdsk for NTFS volumes. Don't bother installing it.
Posted by: 43vents.com at January 29, 2008 1:30 PMI 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 6:37 PMHello!
My computer completely broke down, because it says that i have a hard drive problem, and when i try to reformat windows,it says that cant cuz i have bad sectors on my hard drive.
P.S. I cant even log in to run command prompt
Good luck!
-Leo
Good Day sir;
My HD stopped working suddenly and it ask for windows repairing, I tried to reinstall windows for repairing, but unfortunately it refuse to install windows unless if I format the HD.
I don’t wont to lose six years of my work data by formatting the HD, is there any way or software to retrieve the data from it before doing format
Please, reply
More importantly, you need to be backing up. If you had been backing up then you wouldn't run the risk of six years of data loss if a single hard disk dies. Once you get this fixed, you must begin backing up regularly.
21-Nov-2008
Many thanks to the posters who have flagged JFileRecovery for dealing with discs that have this error. It worked for me, allowing me to salvage several old mini-DVDs containing video that I had never been able to download via either the camcorder or my PC's DVD drive.
Posted by: Hombre7 at January 5, 2009 3:54 PMI use "getdataback" it's a great HD data recover solution that works very well, unless your HD is completely damaged ie firmware or scratched.
Posted by: Chris at February 24, 2009 1:13 PMCheck www.r-cis.com to get free software for hdd data recovery
Posted by: Aied at March 7, 2009 4:43 AMHi,
I couldn't copy the Outlook.pst file because bad sectors on the hard disk and I copied the file successfully after I used "chkdsk /R".
Thank you very much for your help!
Posted by: Luis Tito at March 30, 2009 1:16 PMpleas tel me how can i fix mycomputer
Posted by: Qaisuddin at May 24, 2009 5:22 AMwhen i install yahoo sadnly mycomputer get badsector when i boot com/ system Root\system32\ntdll.dll