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12 October 2023  Ashley S. Miller  Specialist of Customer Service Dept.
 

Summary
Learn how to repair hard disk bad sectors without losing data caused by factors like aging, insufficient memory, frequent software access, and more.



Table of contents

table iconI. Overview of hard disk bad sectors
table iconII. Use Renee Undeleter to recover data in hard disk
table iconIII. How to repair hard disk bad sectors
how to fix bad sectors on hard drive

I. Overview of hard disk bad sectors

Bad sectors (Bad sectors), also known as bad sectors, are permanently damaged storage units on a hard disk. Once a sector is damaged, all information saved in that section will be lost. Normally, operating systems like Windows 10/8/7 will skip a bad sector after finding and marking it. Bad sectors are generally divided into two types: hard bad sectors (also known as physical bad sectors) and soft bad sectors (also known as logical bad sectors). Hard bad sectors are mainly caused by physical damage, such as problems in manufacturing, physical damage, etc.; soft bad sectors are usually related to software problems, such as improper operation of the hard disk, file system errors, etc.
Another situation is that track 0 is damaged, that is, the first track (track 0) of the disk is damaged and cannot be read or written. Track 0 damage is also a kind of bad track, but because the position of track 0 is very important, it will be more troublesome to deal with. can be viewed below 0 track damage fault repair method.
When the operating system detects bad sectors, whether logical or physical, the operating system marks them as unusable. Therefore, the loss of disk capacity is inevitable, and the data stored in it is also at risk of loss. So, how should we repair hard disk bad sectors without losing data? It is recommended to restore/extract the data in the hard disk first, and then repair the bad sectors of the hard disk.

II. Use Renee Undeleter to recover data in hard disk

1. What is Renee Undeleter?

Renee Undeleter is a software specially designed to restore various data files. When you accidentally delete important files, empty the recycle bin, or format the disk/storage, you can use this tool to find the lost data back. This software covers four functional modules, including file recovery, format recovery, partition recovery and image creation, so it can help you solve many data loss problems that may occur during system use in an all-round way, which is very convenient.
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Supported devices SD card, SDHC, SDXC, USB flash drive, hard disk and computer.

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2. How to use Renee Undeleter to recover hard disk data?

Step 1: Download, install and run Renee Undeleter, select the option Whole Disk Scan in the main interface. This option will scan the entire hard disk, so do not install the software to any partition of the hard disk that needs to be scanned. In the hard disk that does not need to be scanned, otherwise it will not be able to use Whole Disk Scan to scan. If the lost data is not much and the lost time is not long, you can also use Fast Partition Scan and Whole Partition Scan modes to save scanning time.
Note: Do not install on the disk that needs to restore data, so as not to cause data overwriting.
select whole disk scan in renee undeleter
Data recovery function introduction:

Fast Partition Scan: Quickly retrieve files lost due to accidental deletion or emptying the recycle bin.

Whole Partition Scan: Quickly recover files lost due to inaccessible or formatted partitions.

Whole Disk Scan: It can analyze and obtain partition information, and fully scan the entire partition.

Image Creation: You can create a mirror image for a partition to back up the current partition state.

Step 2: Next, select the disk device to be scanned and then click Next. Select default setting on the advanced setting interface.
select a disk to recover in renee undeleter
Step 3: After that, the software will analyze the disk device. After scanning, you can double-click the file in the preview window on the right to preview it, then select the file you want to restore, and click the Recover button in the lower right corner to restore the selected file.
select taget files to recover with renee undeleter
Step 4: Next, select the target folder, click Browse to select another disk to save the recovered files, and then click the Recover button to start the file recovery command, you just need to wait patiently.
recover files from whole disk scan with renee undeleter

III. How to repair hard disk bad sectors

1. Check and fix hard drive errors in Windows 10/8/7 with Windows built-in tools

You can try using Windows built-in tools to check and fix hard drive errors. Please do the following in Windows 10, 8 or 7:
Step 1: Please press the (Windows + R) key, enter (diskmgmt.msc) in the pop-up input box, and then click (OK).
run disk management
Step 2: Right-click the target hard disk partition, and then select (Properties) on the menu.
partition of hard drive
Step 3: Select (Check) in the (Tools) column.
check SD card
Step 4: If your system is Windows 7 or Windows 8, please check (Automatically fix file system errors) and (Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors), and Windows10 automatically repairs all errors by default.
fix system errors Windows 7/8
The function of hard disk error scanning is mainly to mark the space where bad sectors appear as unusable at the file system level, so as to prevent file data from being written into these unstable data storage spaces. If you use hard disk scanning software such as HDD-Scan to detect, these bad sectors will still be displayed.

2. Low-level formatting

Low-level formatting is to re-clear the contents of the disk, restore the factory state, divide cylinders and tracks, and then divide the tracks into several sectors, and each sector is divided into identification part ID, interval area GAP and data area DATA, etc. During the partitioning process, if a storage location is unstorable or unstable, the low-level format will omit the location, so that the Windows operating system or software such as HDD-Scan can no longer access the location.
Kind tipsLow-level formatting is a lossy operation, which has a certain negative impact on the life of the hard disk. Therefore, if it is not necessary, please try not to low-level format the hard disk.
The following takes the HDD LLF Low Level Format Tool as an example to introduce the steps of low-level formatting, download link: http://www.drfreeware.org/HDDLLF.4.40.exe
Step 1: Download and run the software, click the hard drive you want to low-level format, and click (Continue) in the lower right corner.
Select the hard disk, click continue
Step 2: After entering the operation interface, select (LOW-LEVEL FORMAT) (low-level format) at the top, and then click (FORMAT THIS DEVICE) (format this device) in the lower right corner.
Select low-level format and click Format this device
Step 3: At this point, a prompt box will pop up, reminding you that if you format this device, all the information in the hard disk will be cleared (please make a data backup in advance), click (Yes), and then wait for a while.
popup click yes
Step 4: In the subsequent window, you can see the progress information of formatting, when the progress bar reaches 100%, it proves that your hard disk has been successfully low-level formatted.
The progress bar reaches 100%, formatting is successful

3. 0 track damage fault repair

The phenomenon of track 0 damage is that the hard disk cannot be started, and “No bootable device” is displayed, as shown in the figure below.
Show No bootable device
And when it is formatted in other systems, it shows “invalid medium or track 0 damaged – the disk cannot be used”.
The main reason for this phenomenon is that the first track (track 0) of the disk is damaged and cannot be read or written. Track 0 damage is also a kind of bad track, but because the position of track 0 is very important, it will be more troublesome to deal with. Because the master boot record area (MBR) of the hard disk is on track 0, a disk without an MBR cannot be started, nor can it be partitioned and formatted.
Because the disk with track 0 damage loses the partition table, we cannot use chkdsk, HDD-Scan or the disk scanning tool that comes with Windows to repair and isolate the bad track. We can only first pass the partition table with the function of rebuildingdata recovery software Extract important data from the disk with damaged track 0, and finally, use special tools to modify the core information of the mechanical hard disk to change track 1 to track 0 before using it, so as to truly repair the hard disk. The specific operation steps are as follows:
Step 1: Remove the hard disk from the host and transfer it to another host that works normally.
We can directly connect the disassembled hard disk to other hosts, or put it into a hard disk box and transfer it to another host through the USB interface. If you choose to use a hard disk box to connect the damaged hard disk to other hosts through the USB interface, please choose a good quality hard disk box, because the next operation may last for several hours, or even 1-2 days.
The hard disk is connected to other hosts
Step 2: Use PCTOOLS or Disk Manager to repair track 0.
If you want to repair the hard disk, then you need some special tools to modify the underlying management information of the hard disk. Here, we recommend using Disk Manager produced by IBM for repair.
disk manager-IBM
1) Press the key combination (ALT+M) on the main screen to enter the advanced management mode;
2) Select (Edit/ViewParations) menu (the upper right corner of the screen will display the setting parameters of the hard disk in BIOS);
3) Press (Del) or (Delete) to delete all partitions;
4) Press the (Insert) or (Ins) key to create a new partition, please select the partition format (FAT12, FAT16, FAT32, etc.) according to your requirements;
5) After selecting the partition format, select the (Cylinders) mode, change (0) in (0, XXXX) to (1), that is, use track 1 as track 0 (note: XXXX indicates the track at the end of the partition, and you can change the value according to your needs).
6) After saving the partition information, just format the hard disk.
Kind tipsEven if the hard disk is repaired successfully, we recommend not to use it as a storage disk for important data to avoid data loss in the future.