The hard disk, a crucial non volatile memory component in computers and other electronic devices retains data even when power is off
However, it's susceptible to aging physical damage and electrical issues which can lead to bad sectors
Bad sectors on a hard disk, magnetic or solid state drive are problematic areas that lose data and functionality
They can result from physical damage like drops or scratches due to wear an interior log damage because of flash memory degradation over provisioning or
improper alignment in SSD hard disks, stored data on magnetic disks divided into tracks and sectors with each sector holding a fixed
data amount when sectors go bad and become unreadable and corrupt leading to data loss
Physical bad sectors caused by external damage are usually irreparable. While logical bad sectors stemming from internal issues can often
be fixed various factors including physical damage, overheating power failures, device, aging and viruses can cause bad sectors
Detecting bad sectors involves observing signs like system freezes strange hard drive noises
inability to format blue screen of death, corrupted files and system boot issues
Windows offers several methods to check for bad sectors. On Windows 11
you can check the health of a disk from settings, system storage, advanced storage settings
disks and volumes here enter the properties of the disk and you shall find the health at the bottom of the page
You can also check and repair bad sectors from the file explorer, right
Click on a drive partition and open its properties in the tools
Tab, click check in the error checking section and then click scan drive to perform the automated scan
The tool will then scan the drive if bad sectors are found
select automatically fix file system errors and scan for an attempt recovery of bad sectors and then click start after performing these steps
windows will have attempted to fix the bad sectors. Alternatively, you can check the health of the hard disk from the command prompt
Of course, this will only let you know whether it is safe to keep using the disk or replace it to check the hard drives
health simply run the command you see on the screen if the status shows OK
it means that you can continue to use the hard drive as it won't be going bad any time soon
However, if it shows pre fail, which is short for predictive failure
it means that the drive may be about to fail based on the ysis of the drive's S MA RT parameters
It's a warning that the drive should be replaced soon to prevent data loss
Alternatively, you can use the check disk utility in the command prompt to check and repair bad sectors on the disk
The check disk utility is particularly effective in scanning and repairing bad sectors
marking irreparable ones to avoid further use to run the tool, execute the command
You see on the screen while entering the drive letter for the partition respective to your environment
After running the command, restart the computer and the check disk utility will scan your system during the boot process
If that doesn't work, you can try running the commands you see on the screen in an elevated powershell in an attempt to repair the
bad sectors. Alternatively, defragmenting the affected drive can also repair bad sectors for that open the defragment and optimize
drives app select the problematic partition and click, optimize this will defragment
The drive third party applications offer more comprehensive solutions for scanning and repairing bad sectors
hard disk, Sentinel HD tune pro and C tools are notable examples
Each providing detailed scans and repair options. Other software like scan eus partition
master AOMI partition, assistant macro writ and ables soft check dry are also effective