can bad sectors be recovered or are just masked ????

[Muhammad Faraz]

Today i turned on my PC and a bad news was waiting had one (1) bad sector in my HDD according to Hard Disk sentinel report
I just ran HDD regenerators recovery wizard from flash drive and it reported it successfully recovered it and now hd tune ,hard disk sentinel both report it healthy
is it cured

or masked ?

 

[Muhammad Faraz]

anyone ???? am I supposed to celebrate my victory or back up all my data and rush to market for a new one ???

 

[AlienX]

Probably cured.

There are some misunderstandings about bad sectors.

There are two possibilities, Physical damage, which didn't happen in your case. Or a malware or just simple corruption.

Bad sector essentially means the File system cannot read the cluster. This can be wrongly written information with unrecognizable characters. What repair tool did was just rewrite the bad clusters with valid data, that's all. Otherwise in other case bad clusters are just marked as not usable and rest File system will never use them again.

In some cases Bad sectors can be a warning sign, Its better idea to backup your important data now.

HDtune telling you a healthy disk means the overall performance/reading speed etc is in good condition.

I strongly suggest you backup your data now, Hard Drives can be very unforgiving.
Source : I am engineer myself.

 

[ali sayani]

If your hard drive is not making a weird clicking noise then its healthy

---------- Post added at 10:47 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:45 PM ----------

but just make a backup to be on safe side

 

[devnull]

Bad sectors or bad blocks ALWAYS means physical damage to the hard disk platter. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. So there is no recovering from that. The only thing that software does is to make a note that that sector is bad so that it is not used in future.

To answer your second question about the health of your HDD, it depends on whether you encounter more bad sectors down the road or not. If you do then your HDD is failing. If not you are very lucky. Most likely you will see more bad sectors in future so if your drive is in warranty you should get it exchanged. If its not in warranty you should scan it at regular intervals, like once a month, and keep backups.

 

[AlienX]

Bad sectors or bad blocks ALWAYS means physical damage to the hard disk platter. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. So there is no recovering from that. The only thing that software does is to make a note that that sector is bad so that it is not used in future.

To answer your second question about the health of your HDD, it depends on whether you encounter more bad sectors down the road or not. If you do then your HDD is failing. If not you are very lucky. Most likely you will see more bad sectors in future so if your drive is in warranty you should get it exchanged. If its not in warranty you should scan it at regular intervals, like once a month, and keep backups.

Please explain how simple bad sectors can appear magically without a solid reason. A faulty hardware means bad sectors, but a bad sector doesn't necessarily mean a faulty hardware. Most of the time Bad sectors are just caused by OS. A simple low level format will be enough to get rid of bad sector.

However if Bad sectors appear again after sometime of repair, and it keeps going than the its the hardware failure.

Simple Software-based bad sectors aren't covered by warranty. By default all Hard Drives come with spare sectors usually in P-LIST which are only accessible through disk repair tools.

Often cross-linking files, bad names on files, improper shutdown, power failure are common reasons for such problems.

 

[Zasha]

@devnull and Alienx: both of you please give sources. Stop making claims without proper backing

 

[devnull]

@devnull and Alienx: both of you please give sources. Stop making claims without proper backing

Here is a source to backup what I said.

Bad block or faulty sector is the name given to a damaged area on a hard disk. It is a physical problem, i. e., the hard disk's magnetic media is defective.

Source: http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/Recovering-Hard-Disks-with-Bad-Blocks/29

 

[AlienX]

Here is a source to backup what I said.



Source: http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/Recovering-Hard-Disks-with-Bad-Blocks/29

This Article is 7 years old. Obsolete information.


In a software type bad sector ("soft" bad sector), reformatting or deleting usually does the trick, and if you plan on a clean install of something, will fix the problem.

Hardware ("hard" or mechanical) bad sectors are not correctable by any software or conventional means.

But I did said in my first reply to backup the important data now as hard drives are very unforgiving. If you just read the thread carefully there was no need for even writing a reply.

Don't you people read the thread carefully before smashing the keyboard with your empty heads to write a reply. OP was also able to google the article, than if you are doing the same, what are you doing here.


I am engineer my self. no need for backing.

But just to be on safe side
http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleid=1583&page=3
http://www.datarecovery.com.sg/data_recovery/bad_sector_on_hard_disk.htm
http://www.computing.net/answers/hardware/bad-sectors-on-hard-disk/4585.html

 

[Muhammad Faraz]

OK guys whatever it is I have planned to buy a new one and put all data on it
now i am confused between buying 500 GB segaate hard drive for 4000 RS or WD cavier green for 4350 (galaxy prices )
any other suggestions ?
My current hard drive 250 GB 7200 rpm 8mb cache had enough juice to fulfill my needs will either of these be worse ? and which one should I buy

 

[AlienX]

OK guys whatever it is I have planned to buy a new one and put all data on it
now i am confused between buying 500 GB segaate hard drive for 4000 RS or WD cavier green for 4350 (galaxy prices )
any other suggestions ?
My current hard drive 250 GB 7200 rpm 8mb cache had enough juice to fulfill my needs will either of these be worse ? and which one should I buy

Seagate new barracuda are better than WD. Also in just 2K more you can get a 1TB seagate @ 6K and some shopkeeper will also give you at around 5800 if you bargain.

WD Drives aren't reliable as some dodgy shopkeepers are also selling refurbished drives. They will give you warranty and claim it to be new but never trust a shopkeeper when in doubt.

BTW Cavier Green are low performance drives. Not suitable for OS.