Programs for checking your hard drive for bad blocks (bad sectors). Recovering bad blocks. Damaged sectors on the hard drive: the process of their recovery

Bad sectors are found on almost all HDDs. Especially those that are actively used for a long time. Sometimes the problem gets out of control and turns into a real disaster, destroying all data on the HDD in any partitions. To prevent this from happening, find out how to repair bad hard drive sectors at home.

What are bad sectors and why do they appear?

You can imagine a bad block as a book with the last chapter torn out. You can read it up to a certain point. But as soon as there is a gap in the pages, you will not be able to finish reading. HDD works the same way. The magnetic head reads information within the track, but in some area it encounters a damaged surface or an empty bit of information, which makes it impossible to extract the information completely.

Almost all hard drives have broken partitions. There may be one or several, and in most cases it is not scary. But over time, there are more and more of them, and they make it increasingly difficult to operate information on the HDD. Such areas can be identified by scanning the hard drive for bad sectors using special utilities.

There can be many reasons for the appearance of bad sectors:

• impact of the disc or use in incorrect conditions;
• interrupting recording by turning off the power;
• overheating and temperature surges;
• natural wear and tear on the heads and writing disk;
• low quality products.

Here you can divide bad sectors into non-recoverable and recoverable sectors. The first are those caused by shock or overheating. They are destroyed once and cannot be restored, and information, as a rule, disappears forever. The second type of bad sectors appears as a result of an interruption in the recording process. They can be restored by simply rewriting the disc.

Over time, write and read speeds may decrease. And after a slight fall of your laptop, the disk may stop working altogether. Everything would be really bad if it weren’t possible to somehow regenerate bad blocks. The fact is that hard drives have a certain reserve area, which means a potentially larger volume than stated on the receipt. You can use the extra space to transfer contents from damaged areas to it. How to recover bad sectors of a hard drive in this way is indicated below.

Danger is near

You can notice the problem not only after a hard drive failure, but also in the initial stages. You should be wary of the following signs:

• Disk writing/reading speed has dropped;
• unusual noise is heard when accessing the HDD;
• began to overheat;
• subjected to mechanical stress;
• The system often crashes, and at startup chkdsk runs without permission.

As a rule, these reasons indicate the beginning of the end of your HDD. To avoid losing data, the first good solution would be a backup. Transfer all the necessary files to another computer, flash drive, disk, and, if possible, set up synchronization with the cloud.

Most modern hard drives check for bad sectors themselves, without user intervention. This is both good and bad, since you cannot influence the elimination of bad blocks and learn about their appearance on system partitions.

When to scan?

You can scan your hard drive for errors at a certain frequency, which depends on the frequency of use of the computer and is calculated individually. Some people carry out scheduled computer maintenance once a month, others - once every six months.

To do this, you can use system utilities or programs to restore bad sectors of the hard drive. A scan should be performed immediately after detecting the problems listed above.

Scanning using standard tools

Starting with Windows 8, the system itself is capable of scanning disks on a schedule and thereby prolonging the operation of the HDD. You can set up a scanning schedule at: “My Computer” / “Management” (a tab will appear in the main menu when the section is active). In Windows, checking your hard drive for bad sectors can be done with the standard chkdsk program. The utility can be launched in several ways:

The work is not fundamentally different, so let’s consider the first option:

1. Open Command Prompt as Administrator. Right-click on the Start menu icon or simply in the lower left corner on Windows 8 and select “Command Prompt (Admin)” from the list.
2. If you want to scan a non-system drive, enter the command with the keys chkdsk /f /r to scan and fix the entire disk at once, and chkdsk D: /f /r to fix only partition D or any other existing one. Additionally, you can enter the /x switch to disable the volume being scanned during the scan. If you diagnose a working disk, the program will prompt you to reboot in order to complete the work without logging in.
3. If chkdsk finds errors in the partitions in use, it will offer to reboot and fix the sectors before the system starts.

To display all options, type help chkdsk. A list will appear showing all available keys with explanations. You can use any combinations at your discretion, as long as you understand the essence of what is happening and the possible consequences. At the end of the scan, all data about the operation will be displayed in the log.

Third party programs

In addition to the built-in chkdsk, you can use third-party programs to fix bad sectors on your hard drive. There are many software that can recover damaged partitions.

Among the popular free software, I would like to highlight Victoria. This program for recovering bad sectors of a hard drive is well known and at one time was very popular among repairmen. The Victoria program can work in both windowed and DOS mode, which allows it to be used even on dead systems to restore information.

Victoria interface

The program is perfect for recovering bad sectors of a hard drive. Victoria is intended more for experienced users, since it contains virtually no interface and does not even have a localization tool included. But this does not prevent it from working correctly with hardware and file systems.

There are quite a lot of settings, switches and different numbers, and when you open the program for the first time, it can be difficult to navigate. But by following the steps below, let's learn how to repair bad sectors on your hard drive.

Testing and Analysis

In the Smart tab of this program you can quickly assess the general condition of the disk. The score is assigned based on an analysis of the various values ​​given in the table. There you can view the status of each parameter separately.

For simple testing, go to the Tests tab. There are quite a lot of settings in each section, so for the initial analysis you can leave everything at default. Click on the Start button and wait until testing is completed. A complete check of the hard drive for bad sectors takes a long time. Therefore, you can safely leave testing overnight and go to bed.

Additionally, the window contains a speed graph or a color indication of sectors. You can switch the view using the Grid checkbox next to the timer.

Correcting sectors

If you don’t have time to wait for several checks, then after assessing the condition, you can immediately begin treating bad sectors of the hard drive. Victoria uses the Remap method to rewrite blocks. It reassigns bad blocks to normal ones from the spare disk space. To repair bad sectors, do the following:

During the scan, the log will display all errors found and a report on the measures taken. It also indicates in which part of the disk the problems were detected.

How to trim?

Often, bad partitions predominate at the beginning or end of the disk. The thought immediately comes to mind: “What if we don’t use the space with bad sectors?” Yes, it can be cut off and no longer used. You can find out which partition of disk space is best to cut off like this:

You should only work with the system disk in DOS mode until the OS is loaded. While the backup or restored one can be marked directly from Windows. This method is good for large HDDs. But it does not help specifically restore broken partitions on the hard drive, as happens during the remap process.

Prevention

To prevent the hard drive from “dying” in your hands, it is advisable to carry out some preventative measures. Depending on the type of equipment.

If you have a laptop:

• try not to hit him;
• Do not shake too much, especially during working hours;
• Do not expose to vibrations or temperature changes.

If you have a desktop computer:

• do not place the system unit in a damp place;
• do not allow components to overheat;
• although the HDD itself is sealed, the board can be damaged by a layer of dust, so get rid of it;
• Install additional cooling on the hard drive if the computer is actively used or the hard drive is unable to cool itself.

Defragmentation is a useful preventive measure for all hard drives. There are a lot of programs, both in-house and third-party, to carry it out.

Now you know how to repair bad sectors on your hard drive and maybe even be able to save valuable information on it if problems arise.

The user probably already knows what bad sectors are on the hdd (“bad blocks”) of the hard disk surface. If you are reading this review, then at least you have an idea: what a “hard drive” is, and what you want to achieve as a result (remove bad sectors on the hdd). But are they really “bad”, and how much of this defect is “hardware” - let’s try to figure it out.

Symptoms of physical surface damage or file system errors

Symptoms of “bad” sectors (“hardware” or “software” reasons) may be the following:

1. Slow launch of installed applications and/or the OS itself;
2. Unreasonable disruption of the operation of some applications (disappearance of previously made settings, lack of functions);
3. Lost folders and files, damaged files;
4. Significant slowdown in the copying process when accessing files.

As you can see, nothing good. Working with a hard drive (hard drive) will consist of 2 stages, answering 2 different questions: are there physical defects on the surface of the hdd, and (if so) - how to remove bad sectors so that they do not come back.

I already wrote in another article about, so it’s better not to install Windows on a disk with bad sectors; first you need to get rid of them.

A little theory

On a hard drive, the surface is divided into sectors. Each sector on the physical surface of one pancake is called a “block”. The number of blocks, if you add them up and count them in total, will always be greater than the number of available blocks “shown” by the hard drive. That is, any manufacturing company makes several (in fact, dozens) of unused “parts” of the hdd surface - spare blocks.

How to remove bad data from a hard drive becomes clear with an understanding of exactly how hdd electronics work. When receiving the address of the block that needs to be accessed (for reading/writing), this address will first be “translated” into the physical address of the block, which is done using a special table (hardwired into the hdd ROM).

In the table, instead of the physical address of the bad block, you can easily and easily flash the address of one of the free (spare) blocks (see one paragraph above). As a result, we will get a “working” hard drive. By the way, without reducing the logical volume.

Note:

This operation of “reassigning” a block address is called “remapping”, or remap.

Purely “logical” defects

Errors may not occur due to physical damage to the surface, but only due to violations in the logic of one sector. These errors, in turn, are also divided into correctable and uncorrectable. “Logical” defects can only be distinguished from physical defects in an indirect way (using different tests).

Correctable logical defect (soft-bad): when the checksum of a logical sector does not match the calculated checksum of its data. This may appear, for example, due to interference and a power outage (and that’s all). The next time you turn it on, the hard drive will first read the data, calculate the checksum, and compare what was received with what was written. In general, in such cases, the equipment generates an error message. From the side of the operating system, this looks like “real” bad.

Unfortunately, neither the operating system nor the BIOS can correct a logical defect on your own. The hard drive controller will not correct the error either: it tries in vain to read this sector on the third, fourth attempt, and when it doesn’t work, it tries to help by adjusting the servo system and the reading channel... At the same time, that same “grinding” is heard, heartbreaking and well known to the owners of the “killed” » screws.

Note: there is no need to worry about the “heads” scraping the surface. The grinding noise comes from the coil on the spindle (rocker arm), constantly trying to adjust the “correct” angle.

Well, in this case, how to remove bad when it is logical? What can help? Forced rewriting of all sectors (with a special program, bypassing even the BIOS) is a good remedy for this. After filling the surface only with “zeros” (then with “ones”, then again with “zeros”), logical bad disappears without a trace.

But there are “incorrigible” logical errors. These errors relate to low-level formatting of the hard drive. The defect itself looks the same. Such defects are considered irreparable because their correction will require doing the “correct” formatting at a low level, which is most often inaccessible to the average user (in the absence of proprietary low-level format utilities, and the “fastening” of the screw must be stationary). In everyday life, such hard drive blocks are disabled in the same ways as “physical” bad - that is, by remap. Not scary.

Programs

For logical “wiping” of the surface (filling occurs with “0s” and “1s”):

fjerase, wdclear, zerofill.

Download the bootable CD image with Victoria.

In the rar archive, if you unpack it, there will be one file - the .iso file (the image of the boot CD).

Working with Victoria DOS

Firstly, why DOS mode and not Windows? The fact is that if there is only one hdd, and Windows is installed on it, from which you can run Victoria win-32, then you won’t be able to “remap” anything, for obvious reasons (you can’t erase Windows).

Therefore, we take a blank CD, write a boot image on it, and boot from this CD:

Having selected the first item, press “Enter”.

Note: you can create such a boot disk (or flash drive) yourself. By simply making a boot disk/flash drive with DOS, then transferring (adding) Victoria files to it (archive - download here: http://www.hdd-911.com/index.php?option=com_docman&Itemid=31&task=view_category&catid=69&order =dmdate_published&ascdesc=DESC).

What should we click first (for the hard drive to be detected)? Press "F2".

If after this the program does not find the hard drive, you can do it yourself. Press “P” on the keyboard, the “Select HDD port” menu will appear - we will select “Ext. PCI ATA/SATA" (“arrows” and “Enter”):

Note: other points are needed if you have a motherboard with IDE controllers (one of which is connected to a PATA standard hard drive).

And, in the list that appears, the hdd we need should be visible (by company/model name). To select hdd, dial the channel number (on which it is located). Press "Enter". All.

After this, you can work with the hard drive: conduct a test and “remap”.

Note: if there are several hard drives in the system, we proceed in a similar way (press the “P” key, and so on).

First, let's see how many “bad” blocks have already been reassigned (for a new hdd, this indicator can only be “zero”):

To display this screen, we pressed “F9”. Pay attention to the fifth line - this is the number of sectors that were “reassigned” (re-allocated sector count - counter of reassigned sectors).

Here, the value is 100 (the real value is the first column). Well, this is not good. In total, for different companies (manufacturing hard drives), the maximum number of re-allocated blocks cannot exceed the “critical” one – several hundred (let’s say 200-300).

Victoria DOS: surface test

To run the surface test, press “F4”:

We leave all the indicators as they are (the beginning and end of the disk, the “linear” reading mode, and, at this stage, “ignore” for bad blocks). The test is started by pressing “Enter”:

As you can see, when running the test, it displays how many blocks are read with an excessively long access time. The number of blocks that are bad is also counted (but now we do not know whether they are “software” or surface defects).

Victoria DOS: remapping

So, the surface test showed that the number of bad blocks is greater than zero. Do not rush to immediately proceed to the remapping operation (which will be discussed below).

“Bad” sectors can arise due to a “software” reason. How to fix this is discussed above. Don't be lazy, run the ZeroFill program (or something similar). Sometimes, you can remove all “bad” blocks after two or three runs of this program.

Also (no matter how funny), the low reading speed of periodically repeated blocks is possible due to poor contact of the SATA connector. By the way, you can try switching the hard drive to a slower mode (jumper on the HDD case, turn on “150 megabits”).

And only if none of these two methods helped (the number and location of bad blocks did not change after the repeated test) - proceed to remapping:

As for the “test”, press “F4”. In the menu, use the down arrow and go to the “Ignore bad blocks” line.

Now - attention! – use the left and right arrows to select “Classic REMAP”. “Enter” is pressed. That's it (we'll wait).

Typically, surface testing takes an hour or more (for 500-750 Gigabytes). Well, for 2 terabytes, and even 5000 rpm. – and 3 hours will not be enough (with the “remapping” mode – longer, but not much).

Upon completion of the work, we will get a “good” hard drive. You can do it again, the final “test”. The number of “reassigned” blocks is summed with the existing one (see, as they said - “F9”, in the fifth line).

If you have conducted a surface test, and as a result, you see that the number of blocks in need of “remapping” goes beyond several hundred (let’s say: there were 100, another 200 appeared) – it is better to abandon “independent” repairs altogether.

Instead of output

Remap- This is good. If such an opportunity still exists (if the total number of reassigned blocks has not passed a certain “critical” value), you can use it. Although, the “durability” of this method (that is, how many days the hard drive will last) is always in doubt. This parameter is not predicted (maybe the hard drive will last for another 2 days, maybe for a month, etc.). Transfer all the necessary data, as soon as access to it appears again.

The “remapping” procedure does not overwrite the data, that is, the program tries to “read” the bad block and copy the data. However, if possible, before remapping, it is still recommended to make a backup copy of the hard drive (with the Ghost program, for example).

(Optional): Instead of the “Classic REMAP” mode, Victoria 3.5 allows you to select “Advanced REMAP”. What can be done if the “standard” remap could not help 100% (2-3 “bad” blocks remained).

As you can see, working with a hard drive takes a lot of time. It also requires the user to have knowledge and maximum accuracy (provided that you understand the meaning of the operations performed using these programs).

In more complex cases (the screw is not detected by the program; after detection, the system freezes) - one way or another, qualified intervention is needed. In addition to “bad” sectors, there may also be problems in the hard drive controller (in its “electronics”). You can't solve this on your own.

Have “bad” sectors appeared? Don't enable their "fix" from Windows itself! Of course, at the same time, it (that is, Windows) will “remap” every sector that is “failure” for it (well, is this necessary?).

Other "programs"

How can I see the number of “reassigned” sectors directly from Windows?

There are many programs that show hard drive ROM data (SMART data). For example, this is Everest (download, launch, watch):

The program is absolutely free. It’s easier to download it here: http://www.aida64.com/downloads/aida64extreme270exe. The first 30 days - all functions are available (but, except for how to “look”, Everest, aka Aida, can’t do anything).

Or, you can download Victoria - already for Windows (starting from version 4.0): http://www.hdd-911.com/index.php. Go to the “Files” section:

As you can see, of. the site contains both versions (for DOS and for Windows).

Compatibility

Victoria-DOS (3.5x) – compatible with SATA controllers (SATA-2). The same goes for IDEs integrated into the motherboard.

This was a review about bad sectors on hdd.

How to check your hard drive?

Problems with hard drives on your computers always arise spontaneously. The main indicator of possible problems with the HDD is time! Yes, time is not only a “doctor”, but also an absolute destroyer!

Signs indicating problems with “tin” are very banal.
Firstly, these are strange sounds that occur while your hard drive is running: squeaks, clanks and other sound effects.
Secondly, this is the heating of the surface of the hard drive case: as you know, a normal HDD does not heat up at all (well, at most its surface is slightly warm).
Thirdly, frequent crashes of the operating system: this indicates a huge number of damaged sectors of your hard drive (clusters).

As you can see, friends, there are quite a few reasons. How to solve a problem? There are two solutions:

1. buy a new hard drive;
2. try to “cure” the old one.

Let's consider option number two, that is, let's try to restore damaged sectors of our HDD disk. So!

Recovering damaged hard drive sectors

First, you should know the reasons that are the catalyst for the occurrence of bad sectors on the HDD:

1. improper shutdown of the computer;
2. viruses and Trojans;
3. incorrect removal of programs and games.

These reasons are the most common. Of course, your hard drive will not immediately show its “disease”, because bad sectors accumulate over quite a long time (six months to a year). But the time will definitely come when your “toughness” will give you an unpleasant surprise! And to prevent this from happening, you should check your HDD from time to time for the number of damaged sectors and “heal” these same bad sectors.

How to do it? There is nothing complicated in the procedure, since it is as simple as three pennies. Go to “Start - My Computer”. Place the cursor over any local disk and right-click. A menu will appear in which you select the last line “Properties”. By clicking on “Properties”, you open the “Properties: system disk (drive letter)” window. There, in this window, you see several active tabs - click on the “Service” tab. Do you see: three sections have appeared and each section has active buttons? In the “Check the disk (Check volume for errors)” section, click on the “Check the volume” button, and then check the checkboxes in the “Scan and repair damaged sectors” and “Automatically correct system errors” items.

Next, click on “Launch” and wait for the process to complete. Warning: The process of fixing hard drive problems can take a very long time! This directly depends on the condition and “age” of your hard drive. Therefore, do not panic if your disk is being “treated” for several hours in a row: this is normal for old or heavily damaged HDDs. Attention: if your damaged disk (for example, C) is currently busy, the OS will prompt you to check the sectors the next time the system boots. We agree, click “Ok” and restart the system. That's it: now your disk has begun to “heal”. All you have to do is wait for the process to complete. After this, we check the disk for adequacy: we try to launch programs and applications, and monitor the speed and quality of execution. But still, it should be taken into account that the old hard drive will sooner or later be covered with a “copper basin”! Therefore, if your HDD is old, be prepared to replace it. Good luck!

Bad sectors on the hard drive

What are bad sectors on a disk? First, let's briefly look at the organization of information storage on a hard drive.

A hard drive is actually made up of several magnetic disks. Magnetic reading heads move above the rotating disks. When recording, the heads magnetize certain areas of the disk, thereby recording zeros and ones - that is, information. Information is not written anywhere, but in strictly defined areas of the disk. The disk is divided into tracks, and they, in turn, into sectors. Information is recorded in these sectors.

In some cases, information from a sector on a disk cannot be read. This sector is called broken. The reason for the formation of bad sectors may be a sudden power outage during a write operation by the hard drive, a shock during operation, overheating, or physical wear and tear. Most often, bad sectors on a hard drive are formed as a result of the first two reasons.

Program for checking disk and recovering bad sectors Victoria

Victoria is a free program by Belarusian programmer Sergei Kazansky for restoring bad sectors and checking the hard drive. This program also has a Windows version.

The Victoria program allows you to view the SMART table of the hard drive, scan the disk surface for bad and hard-to-read sectors, restore bad sectors, and completely erase all sectors on the hard drive (low-level formatting). So, let's get down to business!

Checking the disk for bad sectors

Before you start checking and repairing bad sectors of your hard drive, you need to make preparations.

It is necessary to properly configure the hard drive controller in the BIOS so that the program can work correctly with the hard drive. It is necessary to set the SATA controller mode in the BIOS to IDE

.

In AHCI mode, Victoria will not be able to recognize the hard drive and will not be able to work with it.

Now you can boot into DOS using a bootable USB flash drive and launch Victoria. First of all, you need to select the IDE channel with which we will work, that is, to which the hard drive being tested is connected. To do this, press the "P" (Latin) key.

In the menu that appears, select a channel and press Enter. If your drive is connected to a SATA port, then most likely you need to select

Ext. PCI ATA/SATA . If your drive has an IDE connector, then select the port to which it is connected. If there is a SATA controller correctly configured in the BIOS on the motherboard (in IDE mode), the program will display a list of channels. It is necessary to enter from the keyboard the number of the channel to which the drive being tested is connected. In our case it is "3".

Enter the number "3" and press Enter. After the channel has been selected, you need to initialize the hard drive in the program. To do this, press the key .

F2 . Service information of the hard drive (its model, capacity and other information) will appear on the screen. If this happens, then you did everything correctly and the program was able to connect to the disk. Now the first thing you should do is look at the SMART table of the hard drive. In many cases, the information from it can clarify the situation even without scanning the surface. To view a SMART disk in Victoria 3.52 you need to press the key F9 In the table, we are primarily interested in two points:

As you can see in the figure above, the number of recovered sectors on this disk is very large (767). This indicates that the disk most likely has some problems with the surface of the disk. In addition, SMART also shows the presence of suspicious sectors, which confirms the version of damage to the disk surface. Such a disk may be able to be recovered, but it should not be used in the future. Such a large number of bad sectors indicates that the disk is no longer reliable. It is better to replace such a disk with a new one and clone information from the defective disk to it. But first, in any case, you need to try to restore damaged sectors on your hard drive.

To return from SMART, press any key.

Recovering bad sectors of a hard drive

Now let's look at the question of how to recover bad sectors on a disk. Fixing bad sectors is actually not that difficult. To begin with, you can simply scan the disk for bad sectors, but we will immediately enable the recovery function.

Now we should say a little about the mechanism for restoring bad sectors or bad blocks. There are two types of unreadable sectors.

In the first case, the sector cannot be read due to a mismatch between the information written in it and the checksum at the end of the sector. This problem can happen if the power is suddenly turned off during the recording process. That is, when the information in the sector has managed to be recorded, but the checksum remains old. Such bad sectors are not inherently defective. They just contain conflicting information that the hard drive cannot recognize. Such bad sectors are treated by erasing the information in them and writing new correct checksums. After this, the sector becomes readable and writable.

In the second case, there is physical damage to the sector (demagnetization, scratch, etc.). Such a defect may occur, for example, due to a shock or overheating of the hard drive during operation. In this case, the process of fixing bad sectors is more complicated. Each disk has a spare unused area. That is, any disk actually has a slightly larger capacity than is actually used. This area is used to redirect unreadable sectors to it.

A new physical address in the spare area for the defective sector is entered into the disk table. The logical address remains the same. That is, the sector seems to remain the same, but in reality it is located in a different place (remap).

This approach, of course, reduces the read and write speed in the area of ​​the disk with the transferred sector, since the magnetic heads have to move to the end of the disk (to the spare area) when accessing the redirected sector. But this approach is justified when the number of forwarded sectors is small and the data processing speed is reduced slightly. Restoring bad sectors using the Victoria 3.52 program Now let's put the theory into practice. To open the disk check menu, press the key F4. In the dialog box that appears, move the cursor to the item for selecting actions with unreadable sectors and with the cursor on the keyboard, scrolling to the right or left, select the item

BB: Erase 256 sect

Even if the process of erasing sectors ends with an error, I recommend not stopping the scan, since the disk may have bad sectors of both the first and second options. And if a bad sector can be restored by erasing, then it is better to do so than to transfer it to the reserve area (which is quite limited).

If it was not possible to restore bad sectors by erasing, then you should try transferring unreadable sectors to the reserve area (remapping). Press the key Restoring bad sectors using the Victoria 3.52 program. This time use the arrows to select BB: Classic REMAP, as it shown on the picture. After that press Enter. The scanning process will begin again. But this time, when a bad sector is detected, the Victoria program will try to perform redirection and move the bad block to the backup area. On some drives, the spare area is very small, so if it runs out of space, the attempt will fail. In our case, everything went well (picture below).

Bad sectors on the hard drive have been successfully restored. Now you need to check the file system for errors (for example, through ERD Commander utility chkdsk

or booting into Windows, if possible) or format the disk. After this, you can continue to use your hard drive without any problems.

In this article we will talk about recovering bad sectors of a hard drive and the reasons for their occurrence. Step-by-step instructions will help you prepare for this procedure and cope with it yourself.

What are bad sectors?

Let's take a quick look at the structure of the hard drive. It consists of several separate disks, above which there are magnetic heads designed for reading and writing information. When storing data, the heads magnetize certain areas of the disk, which is divided into tracks and smaller components - sectors.

• It is in them that units of information are stored. If a sector becomes unreadable, it is called “broken”.
• Several signs indicate the occurrence of such a problem:
• creaks, rattles, tapping when the disk is operating;

heating the surface of the HDD (this should not happen under normal conditions);

Frequent errors when working and starting the operating system.

Also, malfunctions in the hard drive may occur due to mechanical damage. They are often caused by dropping a hard drive or computer, resulting in damage to the magnetic surface (for example, during transportation).

Non-working parts also appear due to manufacturing defects. In this case, they may not appear immediately, but “crumble” over time, quickly increasing their number to a critical level.

Important! If you suspect mechanical damage or defects, you should immediately contact specialists or exchange the hard drive under warranty.

Recovering bad HDD sectors using Victoria

If the appearance of broken segments is associated with software failures, then they can be restored using specialized software. One such program for recovering bad hdd sectors is Victoria. The utility is available in two versions - for Windows and DOS. Recovery via DOS will be the most effective, since when the OS is running, some sectors may be occupied and therefore unavailable for scanning.

Victoria HDD - diagnostic program

Scanning

To get started, we will need to do a little preparation. First, you will need a disk with a program image recorded on it or a bootable flash drive. If everyone can cope with recording an image, then creating a flash drive may be difficult.

Let's take a closer look at this step:

Note! The program takes up very little space, so after installing it, the drive can be used to store other information. To avoid accidentally deleting files necessary for the utility to work, it is recommended to select a separate folder for them.

Let's start the scanning process: Here we need a point"Reallocated sector count" , which displays the number of fragments located in the reserve zone, as well as"Current pending sectors"

, where parts that cannot be read are displayed. If their number is not very high, then the disk can be restored.

Hard drive recovery

Let's figure out exactly how this process happens. Problem segments can be roughly divided into two types. The first ones are not readable due to a mismatch between the information stored in them and its checksums.

The second type occurs as a result of mechanical damage. In this case, recovery is more difficult, but still possible. Restoring the functionality of such parts is carried out through the use of reserve areas that are on each hard drive.

We begin to recover each of these types of errors.

Video: HDD - “healing” bad sectors

First, let's try to fix bad sectors by erasing the information stored in them:

• press F4 and get to the verification menu;
• in the menu for selecting operations with unreadable sectors, indicate “BB: Erase 256 sect” and press “Enter”.

A long process of scanning and repairing bad sectors of the HDD will begin. If the program finds a bad sector, it will try to erase it, thereby correcting the error. If there is a mechanical defect, an error will be reported. In any case, you must wait until the check is completed and then separately correct the sectors with physical defects.

For this:

Now the recovery operation will work on a different principle, trying not to erase bad sectors, but to replace them with space from the reserve area.

Important! If there are a lot of such sectors, then the reserve space may run out. A special message will inform you about this, and further restoration will become impossible.

After successfully recovering bad sectors on your hard drive, it is recommended to conduct a full check of the file system for errors.

This can be done using the CHKDSK utility or in the following way:

Photo: checking the disk for errors

Attention! To ensure that the system not only finds, but also corrects problems, before starting the scan, select “Automatically fix system errors.”

The methods described above will help you easily deal with non-critical cases of problem sectors, find and fix them.