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How do I know if my hard drive has bad sectors? Soft bad sectors are repairable by overwriting on disk with zeros, which can be done by bad sector repair software such as DiskGenius. When operating system tries to read or write data stored on these sectors and finds error correction code (ECC) which does not match content of the sector, that indicates that something is wrong and these sectors may be tagged as bad sectors. Logical / soft bad sectors are sectors on hard drive that appear to not be working properly. This type of bad sector cannot be repaired, but it can be prevented.
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As to solid-state drive, bad sectors are the result of worn out flash memory cell or other defects. For example, your computer gets bumped while its hard drive is writing data, hard disk is exposed to extreme heat, or some mechanical part fails, all these are likely to cause hard bad sectors. If a hard drive's head touches the rotating plater, that area will be damaged. Physical / hard bad sectors are a cluster of sectors of the hard drive that are physically damaged.
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There are two types of bad sectors – physical (hard) and logical (soft) bad sector. In fact, it is very common that disk used for a long time has bad sectors. These phenomena show that there must be bad sectors on the disk. Something weird will happen if the hard disk has bad sectors, for instance, operating system cannot boot normally hard disk can't be formatted when you open a file, error is reported. Guide #2: How to repair bad sectors using free bad sector repair tool?Ī bad sector is a sector on a hard disk that cannot be used due to permanent damage (or an OS inability to successfully access it), such as physical damage to the disk surface (or sometimes sectors being stuck in a magnetic or digital state that cannot be reversed) or failed flash memory transistors.
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