Aug312011

How can I repair bad sectors on a hard drive?

polycap asks:

Can I repair bad sectors on my Hard Disk on a machine without an operating system?


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  • Mulder August 31, 2011

    You really can’t do that. There are bad sectors on all hard drives, and more will develop during normal use. There is software that will attempt to repair bad sectors, but it will most likely fail, after which you’ll need disk recovery software if you need to recover the data from that sector (if you have no backup).

    In any case, you would need an OS on the hard drive, or software that will boot your system so that you can run the repair software.

    Reply
  • Jeffery Fabish August 31, 2011

    Polycap,

    You’ll want to download and burn a Linux LiveCD and run the BadBlocks utility. However, if you format the hard drive and put Linux on it all together, you will receive minimal bad clusters (Granted you use EXT3+).

    Reply
  • Anonymous September 1, 2011

    SpinRite
    http://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm

    Reply
  • FIDELIS September 3, 2011

    Hello, spinrite is a good paid software to accomplish what you want.  The best one I have ever used is hdd regenerator.  Here is the link:

    http://www.gold-software.com/download7605.html

    There is this program, which is a freeware replacement software for hdd regenerator:

    http://www.hdat2.com/

    Reply
  • Gus88 September 3, 2011

    You can check bad sectors and remove errs by hitting start,then my computer,then right click on hard drive c: then go to properties.then tools and there you will find the tools you can use. I may have misunderstood your question.

    Reply
  • Ammarkamboh February 8, 2012

    He foolash mane are all above
    Say bad saktor bat I say bad saktor cant nat remove You dont try it
    You west time !

    Reply
  • Wayne May 11, 2012

    There are a few different utilities you can use. HDD Re-generator or HDAT2 is what I would recommend. SpinRite is good but takes much longer to perform the job. Please don’t confuse chkdsk with these other utilities. Check Disk does not repair a bad sector. It can repair problems related to bad sectors, lost clusters, cross-linked files, and directory errors, but is not able to repair a bad sector itself.

    http://computech-ct.com/

    Reply
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