One of the most unfavorable problems is the complete failure of the user PC. In order to prevent the above problems, periodically check the bad sectors periodically. hard drive. To understand the process of how to recover with bad sectors, you should understand the structure of the hard drive itself. A hard disk is a sealed box containing several rotating disks that are responsible for writing data.
The concept of “sector” is directly related to the separation of information recorded on a disk, because it is distributed on compact memory cells called sectors. Often, the read head crashes when taking data from a particular sector, followed by the inability to start, for example, any recorded file. PC operating system warns about error reading file. Do not forget that a correctly working hard drive can read any data, having an integrated structure of all sectors. The occurrence of a damaged area (bad sector) portends the threat of an imminent malfunction of the entire HDD.
1. Factors affecting the way how to fix bad sectors on the HDD, as well as the main actions in the event of bad sectors.
If a PC user is attentive to the performance of his system, he will always be aware of the appearance of the first bad sectors by performing a HDD check. First of all, online copying necessary information on good hDD, will be a good start to solving a serious problem. The type of check for bad sectors depends on whether the computer system starts up or not. With a working operating system, in order to run diagnostics and means of restoring broken areas, the following actions should be followed:
It is worth noting that to activate the recovery tool, it is recommended that the “Automatically fix system errors". Thanks to a regular set of software utilities, the system will automatically check the hard drive for problems and fix them. A reboot of the PC will be required for full access of the HDD resuscitator programs without the participation of the active OS. Many users are wondering how to remove bad sectors on the hard drive, and also perform its verification in a situation where the computer does not start? To do this, you must have a disk containing a virtual system, after installing it in the drive, the computer will be able to turn on in the usual mode, then the user will be able to perform actions similar to those described above with a working PC. You should know that with installation disk with the OS, in case of inoperability of the current PC system, it is possible to identify damaged hard sectors drive. To do this, during the launch of the installation disc, the user activates the "Repair System" section. When performing the recovery, the damaged sections of the HDD will undergo sequential diagnostics with the elimination of the identified malfunctions. To check for bad sectors on the hard drive, the recovery console can be launched without participation boot disk in the following way:
- At the initial stage of starting the PC, press the "F8" button.
- Enter safe mode supported by command line.
How to restore sector zero on the computer’s hard drive?
If the user is faced with the inscription “Primary master harddisk fail”, it means that there was a problem of impossibility to read information from the zero sector disk containing the main partition table. Malfunctions in the work of this sector first cause severe slowdowns of the system, and sometimes its complete freezing. Zero sector recovery can be done through low-level formatting by installing the appropriate software from the manufacturer of the HDD, but this will lead to a complete loss of all data. Right decision in case of a malfunction of the zero sector, diagnostics of all sectors of the hard drive will become possible with software utilities similar to Victoria.
2. How to fix bad sectors on the hard drive using Victoria?
The Victoria program is aimed at diagnosing, as well as restoring hard drive areas. The utility for a fairly short scan time, easily detects bad sectors, making them inoperative. Such selected areas will not be read by the system, which means that subsequent freezes and interruptions in the process of reading data will be temporarily excluded. Victoria provides the PC owner with information about whether a particular hard drive needs treatment and how much time it will be able to work correctly. The utility does not take up much space and is launched instantly from the archive without downloading the installation package. With the first launch of the application, a system window opens with tabs containing the main functionality, these are data on the status of disks, testing, settings, and so on. The “TEST” tab will contain the required information for checking and eliminating bad sectors of the HDD. In the process hard check disk utility Victoria, the program interface will display the color designation of the tested sectors:
Among the list of other common utilities for checking the hard drive, with which you can check the hard drive for bad sectors, it should be noted:
- Acronis Disk.
- Director suite.
- MHDD.
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Bad sectors for a hard drive are like a cancerous tumor for an organism. The presence of bad sectors on the hard drive causes the computer to freeze, suddenly reboots during operation, does not save information or keeps it distorted, "the system falls out blue screen death ", the system" crashes "after a short operation. If bad sectors appeared on the disk, unfortunately, the drive’s diagnosis is disappointing - in the language of system administrators, the disk will" crumble "further, bad clusters will grow, the number of badges will only increase and" screw 's best to be replaced immediately. Macrorit Disk Scanner is free program to test the hard disk for bad sectors.
Search for bad sectors
A computer’s hard drive is a mechanical product and therefore the most unreliable device on a computer. Because of this, inevitably, over time, bad areas appear on the hard disk - bad sectors. The only function of Macrorit Disk Scanner is to scan the surface of the hard disk to detect defective, damaged, bad and bad blocks. To test the hard drive, just run the program, select the drive to be tested from the list and click on the "Start Now" button. Macrorit Disk Scanner diagnoses each sector on the disk and visually displays a scan map on which the status of the blocks is displayed: green - the block is healthy, red - the block is bad.
Today the topic will be discussed: How to check the hard drive for errors and bad sectors in windows 7
There are several ways to check your hard drive.
Checking hdd for bad sectors using Windows
First of all, you can check the hard drive for bad sectors using standard diagnostic tools of the operating system. To do this, you need to go to the “Computer” tab, select the hard drive and, right-clicking on it, select the “Properties” tab
The Properties window opens. local disk, where you need to go to the “Service” tab and click on the “Run Scan” button
The next window for checking the local disk will open before you - there you should tick off the actions that you would like to perform, and then click the start button.
If during the check you selected the main disk on which the system is installed, then a warning from the system will appear on the monitor, where you will have to agree.
The next time you start the computer, the hard drive checks for bad sectors and errors.
If another disk was selected, the hard disk check window will appear, after which a notification will appear on the end of the check.
How to check hdd for errors and bad sectors of windows 7 via cmd?
The following method is slightly different from the first. Go to the Start menu and enter “cmd” in the search field. Right-click on the result, and then select "Run as administrator" in the drop-down menu
In the console window that opens, you should enter the command: “chkdsk d: / f / r” and press “Enter”
Check for broken hdd sectors, after which the result will be displayed.
The program for checking the hard disk for errors and bad sectors
In addition, there are external programs for monitoring and hard fixes drives of your computer. One of them is HDDScan.
You can download this program from the official site, and within the framework of this article we will consider how to check the hard drive for bad sectors with its help. So, click on the program icon. The main window will appear where you will see the workspace of the program
Click on the “New task” button, which is in the middle, and select “Surface test” from the drop-down menu
In the next window, select one of the test options and click the "Add test" button
A brief look at what each test means:
Verify - Reading to the internal buffer of the drive without transferring via sATA interface, IDE or another. The operation time is being measured.
Read - Reads, transfers, checks data and measures the time of the operation.
Erase - the program writes successively blocks of data to disk, measuring the operation time (All data in the blocks will be deleted).
Butterfly Read - just like the Read test, only the blocks are read in sequence: reading starts at the beginning and end of the range, block 0 and last are tested, then 1 and the penultimate one.
For average testing, the Read test is usually suitable: after you check your hard drive, double-click on the test test window and see the graph and status of the test.
Hello everybody! Very often, when diagnosing a computer, you have to check the hard drive for bad sectors and sometimes you need to check the program in Windows. From under Windows it is certainly more effective, but there are such cases.
I already wrote an article as possible, but people are looking for a program to check hdd in windows itself and sometimes I understand them. Therefore, I will show how this can be done in the most popular and proven HD Tune program.
Download and install. This version is free.
- Choose a hard drive, for example, I have 2 of them
- Select the Error Scan window
- Click the Start button
It will check the hard drive. Its time depends on the size of the hard drive. My terabyte will be checked for about an hour. When the check is complete, all cells should be painted. It should not be red. If there is a red color, then you have a bad sector. If everything is green, then the sectors of the hard drive are intact.
What to do if there is a bad sector on the hard drive?
- First you need to find out the reason:
- Temperature. Look at the temperature of the hard drive, the norm is considered to be from 30 to 35 degrees, and from 35 to 40, this is already critical, which is no longer normal! In order to have a normal temperature, you need to monthly clean your computer from dust and the computer must have a properly configured cooling system (as in the picture below).
- Manufacturing defects. There is nothing to be done. Just if there is a guarantee - take where you bought it, if not, you can try to fix it.
- Misuse. Any device is afraid of falls, well, and large vibrations. If you did not drop it and did not shake it strongly, then most likely the reason is temperature or marriage.
2. When you identify the cause of the breakdown, you can try to cure the hard drive. To do this, you can use the program, it can automatically fix bad sectors. If you are a professional, you can use the program mhdd so or victoria.
Each hard drive has spare sectors, usually 50 of them. So the program reassigns the bad to spare. If you have a whole block of bad sectors and there are more than 50, then it will be pointless to overwrite.
3. After all the tests, I would advise you to buy a new HDD, because there is no guarantee that new bad sectors will not appear. In the meantime, it is cured, you can sell it cheaper, warning that in hdd sectors are overwritten.
It may be such that the test drags on to infinity or the computer does not see it at all, then something could happen to the electronics or to the head that reads the data. Here, of course, if you need data, you need to contact specialized companies that disassemble and repair them.
What to do if you think that the hard drive is not working and there are no bad sectors?
It could be like that too. I witnessed when there are no bad sectors, and the computer is so dumb that it seems that there are bad sectors))) To do this, take the HDDScan program:
It is portable, so we just run it without installation. She can also be checked ssd disk for mistakes.
To run the test for a large response you need:
- Choose your hard drive
- Press the button with magnifier and hard drive
- Choose Surface Tests
- Set Read
- Add test. Next, the test will start automatically.
- We click on RD-Read two times, a window will open.
- Select the Map tab and see the site map. There are already more colors. Each of them means response time (to see the check in real time, uncheck the Disable map dynamic update Map Udate Queue).
- We wait until the hard drive is fully checked and look in the right column.
- The more 5ms sectors, the better, these are sectors with a 5ms response.
- Response up to 150 ms (green) and up to 500 ms (orange) are not good, but they are not critical, to know more precisely, you need to scan from under windows in the mhdd program. More than 500 ms (red), then the reason is clear. That's why it slows down.
- If you see Bads, then you have bad sectors. What to do I wrote above. Also here, as an option, you can try and then check the HDD again. If everything is the same, then you can also sell it cheaper and buy a new one or reassign it to mhdd.
That’s all. I think many will find useful information on how to check the hard drive for bad sectors.
And here's how to fix it in Victoria:
Computer hard drive is a very sensitive component. Errors appearing in its file system, broken sectors on the surface, mechanical failures sometimes become the cause total failure computer system. The same problems are typical for flash drives, which in essence are practically no different from a hard drive. How to determine the presence of errors and bad sectors and how to fix them if possible?
Just a little theory
Many just confuse mistakes file system and bad sectors. Therefore, we will try to clarify the difference between these phenomena and the reason for their appearance. We also determine what the symptoms of the manifestations that may appear on the surface of the hard drive may turn out to be.
File system errors
When they talk about hard errors drive and trying to fix them using the built-in Windows utilities chkdsk, then most often they mean file system errors. Such errors are associated with metadata problems that describe the file system itself: $ Bitmap, $ BadClus, main file table, and various indexes file errors.
For example, errors in the $ bitmap file nTFS systems may cause the system to incorrectly recognize the volume of free space in the volume. And problems with the $ BadClus file can lead to an incorrect definition of bad sectors and an attempt to write data to such sectors, which will cause the computer to freeze completely.
Bad sectors
The nature of the broken sectors is somewhat different. The hard drive is “sliced” into sectors while still in production. It is then that it is created logical structurethen it gets magnetic properties to write data. These structures become malfunctioning as a result of the gradual degradation of the hard surface areas, which become such due to careless handling of the hard drive that accidentally once fell to the floor or was hit in the case even with an ordinary screwdriver.
Testing programs that fall on parts of a degrading surface detect the so-called bad or damaged sectors - bad sectors. The sectors that have lost their magnetic properties do not allow reading and writing data to them. It is possible to eliminate faulty hard drive structures. For this, manufacturers create special reserve areas of sectors. When a bad sector is diagnosed at a specific address, its address is reassigned to the sector from this reserve area.
Symptoms of the manifestation of errors and bad sectors
We have already talked a bit about the symptoms of manifestations of file system errors above. However, the symptoms are sometimes very diverse. Here are some manifestations of errors and bad sectors that arose in the hard drive.
- Noticeable freezing of the operating system during read and write operations.
- Crash while loading the operating system. For example, a download only continues until a boot notification and a Windows logo appear.
- Frequent errors in the operating environment.
- Extremely slow and unproductive operation of the operating system.
Here is an incomplete list of the manifestations of errors associated with file system problems and the presence of degrading areas of the hard drive. What to do in such cases?
Checking errors using Windows
Checking and fixing file system errors in Windows is carried out by the standard utility of this operating environment called chkdsk. It can also be useful in eliminating software-generated bad sectors as a result of viruses. It can be launched both in the graphical environment and from the command line. Consider the most affordable option for its implementation in a graphical environment.
Inactive Volume Check
Checking an inactive volume is the easiest. You can run it completely in graphical mode. By inactive volume we mean a partition on which the currently operating operating system is not installed. It can be a connected other hard drive or, for example, drive D.
Click the "Run Test" button.
The utility is launched from the “Service” tab of the volume properties. In this tab there is a button “Run check”. If you click it, the chkdsk utility window opens. To check for bad sectors that appeared as a result of software errors, you need to check the box next to the corresponding option. Next, just click the “Start” button - the utility will check and correct errors.
Chkdsk utility checks volume D, also diagnosing bad sectors.
Verify system volume
Checking and correcting errors in the system volume, where the operating environment that was in force at the time of the scan, is a little different. The utility defines such a volume as connected, and therefore warns that it cannot perform the check, but offers to perform it upon subsequent reboot.
The chkdsk utility reports that it cannot check the disk.
Rebooting the computer, the user will find that during boot, after the appearance of the Windows logo, a black screen appears. This black screen is gradually filled with lines of text. This runs the chkdsk utility, which checks the system volume of the hard drive. After checking and necessary corrections, it will demonstrate the result, and then the loading of the operating system will continue.
The chkdsk utility checks volume C after a reboot.
Bad sector programs for bad sectors
On the market software There are a number of applications that can test the surface of a hard drive. In this case, not one volume is tested, but the entire surface of the hard drive. Of course, the user can independently establish the boundary sectors and test individual areas. To identify bad sectors, a test is usually performed to read sector data.
Important: availability test results bad sectors must be considered in conjunction with SMART indicators, such as Reallocation Sector Count, Reallocation Event Count.
Data Lifeguard Diagnostic
This utility was created by the developers of Western Digital. It is available for download on the official website of the company. Lifeguard Diagnostic works perfectly with hard drives of almost any manufacturer, and not only with hard drives native to WD, as you might think. It offers a number of tests: Fast, Advanced, as well as the ability to fill in sectors of the hard drive with zeros.
Data Lifeguard Diagnostic Utility Interface
We are most interested in the advanced test. This test allows you to detect bad sectors on the surface of the disks. When the program finds the bad sector, it informs the user about this, asking him to choose whether he wants to fix the detected error. If he agrees, then the application writes to sector 0, so the sector data will be lost.
A selection of utility tests. We need an Extended Test.
The duration of this test is longer than the quick test. Testing time depends on the size of the drive, since the test is carried out sweat the entire surface, starting from sector 0 and ending with the maximum value of LBA.
Extended test utilities at work.
HDDScan
The HDDScan application also seems to be an excellent tester of the hard drive surface. It can often be seen as part of entire software systems such as LiveCD. This application has a graphical interface and offers a number of tests, among which in our case the most interesting is “Surface Tests”.
Select the Surface Test from the drop-down list.
Important: when conducting surface tests from under Windows, it is necessary to close all running programs in order to avoid random results initiated by the action of these programs during the test.
After selecting a test, an additional window opens, in which the test parameters are presented. Leave the “Read” option turned on, which will only allow reading data from sectors. So, we will identify sectors from which information cannot be read for the set time (bad sectors), hovering sectors and normal cells. We leave the fields of the initial and final sectors unchanged if we want to check the entire surface.
Leave the Read test option enabled.
When testing this program, a number of sectors are revealed:
- bad sectors
- hovering sectors that take more than 500 ms to read from
- sectors with read times from 150 to 500 ms,
- sectors with read times from 50 to 150 ms,
- sectors with a read time of 10 to 20 ms,
- normal HDDScan considers such sectors whose data are read in 5 ms.
The test result of the program is available in the form of a line graph, a map of the distribution of sectors, as well as in the form of a regular text report.
We’ll select the “Surface Testing” option.
The test is very simple and accessible to an ordinary user HDD Control. To start it, you just need to click the "Surface Test" button. It is devoid of additional options that would allow you to customize the type of test. During testing, only two types of sectors are revealed: with excellent read results and bad sectors.
Ashampoo HDD Control checks the surface of the disk.
Victoria HDD
Victoria considers the health of the verified GOOD hard drive.
This application is able to collect information about the SMART health of the hard drive. Also, it allows you to test the surface of the disk, reassign the damaged sectors with the Remap operation, and reset the bad sectors. It also subdivides sectors into groups:
- bad sectors (Error),
- hover sectors with read times of more than 600 ms,
- hovering sectors with read time from 200 to 600 ms,
- sectors with read times from 50 to 200 ms,
- sectors with a read time of 20 to 50 ms,
- victoria diagnoses normal sectors as part of reading data up to 5 ms.
To produce hard testing disk, you can run this program in graphic windows mode. Next, you need to select the "Tests" tab. This is where surface tests are located. Four hard surface options are available:
- Ignore,
- Remap
- Erase
- Restore
First of all, Ignore test can be carried out to determine if there are bad sectors on the hard drive surface. If they are, then you need to start the Remap test. This test will allow you to reassign the addresses of damaged sectors to the reserved area where normal sectors are located.
Types of available tests and categories of sectors. Victoria checks the surface.
If after the Remap test Victoria continues to diagnose bad sectors, then you can still try to restore their performance by applying the Restore test. The Erase option must be used wisely from under Windows, since it writes zeros to sectors - it erases sector data. It can be used only within a sample of sectors whose data are not related to the operating system.
Brief summary
It should be noted that there is a difference between errors resolved chkdsk utility operating room windows systems and bad sectorseliminated by programs such as Victoria HDD. The former are caused by file system malfunctions, and the latter are often the result of the loss of magnetic properties by sectors of the surface of the hard drive and its gradual degradation. However, chkdsk can fix some problems of bad sectors.
To eliminate bad sectors, you can use such applications as: Data Lifeguard Diagnostic, Ashampoo HDD Control, HDDScan, Victoria. We highlight Victoria HDD as the best application for checking and eliminating bad sectors, as it offers a number of tests: Ignore, Remap, Erase and Restore. It allows not only to detect bad structures of the hard surface, but also to treat HDD.
