How to Fix Bad Sectors on Hard Drive

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 on hard drive that are damaged logically.

• 2 ways to repair bad sectors on hard drive
• How to Recover Data from External Hard Drive

Part 1 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.

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.

Part 2 How to Recover Data from External Hard Drive

If you can not repair bad sectors well and you did not backup hard drive data habitually .But you want to recover data from external hard drive, on this case you can try a external hard drive recovery software program.This tool can hepl you recover data from hard drive in bad sectors.Wondershare data recovery or Wondershare data recovery for mac is a professional external hard drive recovery software.

4 simple steps to recover data from external hard drive in bad sectors

Step 1 Launch wondershare external hard drive data recovery and select the file type to start "Partition Recovery" .

Step 2 Select the partition where you lost your data

Step 3 All partitions on your hard drive will be detected and listed.You can select the one you are going to recover and click “Start” to scan for lost data.

Step 4 After scanning, all recoverable files on hard drive will be shown in the window,you just need to select data you need and click “Recover” to save them on your computer.