What's a bad sector?

A hard drive contains millions of sectors. Once a sector is damaged, the data on it can't be read and you are unable to write on it. As to bad sectors, there are two kinds, one is physically bad and one is logically bad. If physically bad, it is unrepairable unless you replace it with a new disk. Otherwise, it can be repaired, and there are two ways to fix bad sectors that are damaged logically.

We are here to repair bad sector on DVD, so from the pop up window select DVD Backup. From the backup options, select DVD to ISO. It is the most generalised format and will let you clone this DVD to another blank DVD in case you need repaired DVD in future. Flobo Floppy Bad Sector Repair This is a Free Floppy disk repair tool. The program eliminates bad sectors of Floppy disk surface. It does not hide bad sectors in the file system, as Scandisk like utilities,it really restores them. HDD Bad Sectors Repair is a handy utility that, as its name suggests, fixes HDD related errors. It is designed for the Maxtor 541DX series of hard drives, so use it only if you own this particular.

2 ways to repair bad sectors on hard drive

Bad sectors can cause data loss on your hard drive. Thus, make sure that you do have backed up the data written on the sector before you take repairing steps, and stop your computer to continue writing on it.

Way1. Repair bad sectors with Windows built-in tool

1. Go to 'My Computer', and choose the disk you want to repair. If you don't know which one, you can fix them all one by one.
2. Right click on the disk, and choose 'Properties'. Then go to the 'Tools' tab.
3. Under the error-checking, hit 'Check now'.
4. Check 'Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors' and click 'Start'.

It generally scans and repairs bad sectors simultaneously. When it finished, the bad sectors are repaired. By the way, if you want to fix file system error at the same time, you also can check the option. There may be a situation that it reminds you it can't be repaired because the disk is using now. Usually it's disk C: where your operating system installed. Then you can choose to repair it automatically when you start your computer next time.

Way2. Fix bad sectors with bad sector repair software

General speaking, bad sectors can be fixed in the solution above. However, it also always happens that the bad sectors appear again when you use your computer next time, and you have to fix it again. If you have encountered this, you can choose to use a professional bad sector repair software to fix it completely at one time. Wondershare Liveboot 2012 can be a nice choice. Its bootable CD provides a purely clean environment, and makes you fix bad sectors on hard drive completely with one click. If your computer can't boot normally, this could be a better choice.

You can get LiveBoot CD or USB here.

1. Insert LiveBoot CD/USB or plug in LiveBoot USB to your computer, and boot your computer from LiveBoot.

2. After entering the system, LiveBoot will be launched automatically. Choose 'Windows Recovery', and hit 'Boot Crash solution'.
3. In the part of 'Solution', find 'Method 2', which allows you to run a Disk Check to repair bad sectors.

Whent the checking and repairing finished, restart your computer, and you will not need to fix this again the next time you use your computer.

Bad Sector Repair Freeware

Moreover, Wondershare LiveBoot 2012 can also help to boot your PC when it's crashed or seriously damaged, such as black screen, blue screen, or freezing, etc.

What to do when a hard disk has a bad sector problem in Windows 10/8/7? Occasionally, when one or more bad sectors come upon on a good hard disk, the disk will go bad. When this happens, the data in those bad sectors may be lost, but the data on the rest of the disk will be unaffected and the disk is still completely usable. Those bad sectors cannot be repaired, but they can be marked as unusable. Once marked as unusable, the Operating System will know not to attempt to store data in those bad sectors. The total disk capacity will be decreased by the amount of storage space in those bad sectors. If the bad sector was caused by a faulty drive head, the problem can spread to many other sectors across the disk.

So, if your hard drive is experiencing one or more bad sectors, follow our instruction to fix your problem as soon as possible.

Part 1. Check the Bad Sectors on Your Hard Drive

To know about the amount of the bad sectors clearly, a professional tool is recommended. EaseUS Partition Master can directly help you check the bad sectors from the hard disk in Windows 10/8/7 with simple clicks and you may download it and follow the steps below to try now.

Step 1: Download the free partition manager and install it. Right-click the disk that you want to check, and then click 'Surface test'.

Step 2: The operation will be immediately performed. Bad sectors will be marked as red.

After the process, you could know exactly how many bad sectors are there. You cannot repair bad sectors except for low-level format. A low-level format is also called a physical format. Modern hard drives are low-level formatted at the factory for the life of the drive. A PC cannot perform an LLF on a modern IDE/ATA or SCSI hard disk, and doing so would destroy the hard disk. That is to say, you can't repair a bad sector. To avoid the hard disk getting worse, clone the disk to a good one.

Hard Disk Bad Sector Repair Tool

Part 2. Replace the Disk with a Good/Bigger One

If the disk is damaged, it is impossible to repair the bad sectors. Your wise choice is to replace the disk. Here we’d like to recommend you try a powerful disk cloning software - EaseUS Disk Copy which is fully compatible with all OS. You can just apply this software to help you upgrade and clone the hard drive with bad sectors to a good one with ease now.

Bad Sector Repair Tool

Note: Do remember to connect your good new hard drive to the computer as a storage device before upgrading the disk with bad sectors to the good one.

If your computer can't boot into your operating system, you must download this software and create a bootable USB. Then you can follow the steps below:

Step 1: Choose 'Disk mode' and select the smaller hard drive as the source disk.

Hard Disk Bad Sector Repair Tool Mac

Step 2: Choose the bigger hard drive to save the data and then click 'Next'.

Bad Sector Repair Tool

Step 3: A warning message tells you that the data on the destination disk will be overwritten. Click “OK” to continue if you do not have important data on the destination disk.

Step 4: Edit the disk layout and then click 'Proceed' to continue.

Best Bad Sector Repair Tool

• 'Autofit the disk' resize the layout on destination disk according to the size of it to make the disk as the best status.
• 'Copy as the source' doesn’t change anything on destination disk and the layout is same as source disk.
• 'Edit disk layout' allows you to manually resize/move partition layout on this destination disk.

Step 5: Wait for the process to complete.

And then shut down your computer, insert the newly upgrade hard drive to your computer and replace the old drive, set the computer to boot from a new hard drive instead of the old one in BIOS.