Check the hard drive for Bad Sector and Bad Sector recognition signs

I. What is Bad Sector?

We can understand this simply, Bad Sector is an area on the computer's hard drive that cannot be used because it has been permanently damaged.

The physical structure of a normal hard drive consists of three main components, which are:

1. Platter (circular disk): Where the firmware is stored - the low-level control of the HDD and data.
2. Actuator: The part that transmits information.
3. Electronic control board (PrintedCircuitBoard = PCB): Contains the communication ports and high-level control of the hard drive.

II. The cause of the hard drive is Bad Sector

There are 7 main causes of a bad sector hard drive:

1. 1 hole (hole) caused by an error in the process of applying a magnetic layer to the platter surface.
2. The weak connection between the magnetic layer and the platter substrate at one location creates a hole.
3. A hole is made in the base surface of the platter caused by time.
4. Errors caused by mechanical movement of the Actuator or by the user's impact lead to the head hitting the platter surface.
5. The lubricant inside the motor, due to the high temperature of the medium that has evaporated to the outside, encounters a lower temperature, so it solidifies into particulate matter, impacting and destroying the platter surface.
6. The high temperature of the computer environment causes degradation of the performance of the magnetic surface.
7. Power failure and/or reset occurred during data read/write.

III. Signs that your hard drive is having Bad Sector

1. The hard drive shows signs of data access errors, cannot be booted, or the computer automatically resets and automatically shuts down.
2. The computer hangs while the hard drive indicator light is still on…
3. Cannot access a folder or a hard drive partition on the machine.
4. Hangs in the DOS environment or cannot ghost the computer again.
5. Bad Track 0- Disk Unsable error when you Format the hard drive.
6. Failed to Fdisk, when you perform Fdisk, the error message 'No fixed disk present' appears, or it may be suspended during the Fdisk process.
7. Error reading Error reading data on driver C:, Retry, Abort, Ignore, Fail. when you run an application on Windows.
8. The hard drive gets hot and doesn't work efficiently or makes strange noises.
9. While installing Windows, the system hangs without any error message.

IV. How to prevent and limit Bad Sector drives?

Pay attention to the temperature problem for the computer, if you are using a laptop, you should leave it in a cool place and it is best to buy a cooling fan. If you are using a PC, install a ventilation fan…

Power is also a major cause of your hard drive failure. For example, the power supply is flickering, unstable. Or more dangerous is a sudden power failure, so if you are using a laptop, never remove the battery from the machine while in use. And if you are using a PC, you can arrange a UPS (uninterruptible power supply).

V. How to check Bad Sector hard drive effectively hiệu

Actually, there are many ways to know if your hard drive has Bad Sector error or not, but I only introduce some of the most effective ways to use it.

#first. Check Bad Sector with HDD Regenerator in Hiren's Boot

+ Step 1: First you need to prepare a Hiren's Boot disc or you can create a bootable usb with Hiren's Boot => then you choose the preferred boot mode as USB or CD. If you do not know how, you can refer to the article: What is BIOS? How to access BIOS of HP, Sony machines

Note: This way is only to Check if your hard drive has Bad Sector? or repair minor Bad Sector errors, but I recommend that you back up your data to another storage device because it is often difficult to fix Bad Sector errors.

+ Step 2: After entering the main menu of Hiren's Boot, select the line Hard Disk Tools

+ Step 3: Next, select HDD Regenerator and press Enter. Then you just let the program load automatically, no need to press anything.

+ Step 4: After running, a hard drive will appear for you to choose. If you are using 2 hard drives, enter the number (1) or (2) and press Enter to select.

If you only have 1 hard drive, press any key to continue or press ESC to exit.

+ Step 5: Here will have 3 options for you:

1. Scan and repair (ie scan the entire hard drive and repair bad sectors by itself)
2. Scan but not repair (scans the hard disk and shows the error location but does not fix the error)
3. Regenerate all sector in a range

You enter option (1) ie full scan and autocorrect => press Enter.

Next, the program will ask where you want to scan from. By default, the program will scan from the first sectors of the hard drive, the default value is 0. You press Enter to continue.

Scanning and auto-correction is in progress, you can sit back and wait. 

A few notes in the process of checking Bad Sector errors:

1. While checking for errors, if you want to stop checking again, you can press the key combination 'Ctrl + C' or 'Ctrl + Pause/Break' to end and the errors fixed by the program are still valid. Please.
2. If you feel that the HDD Regenerator program checks very slowly and continuously displays many B's, it means that your hard drive (HDD) has failed too badly. And you should immediately back up important data to another computer, and if there is nothing important, just use it until it dies.
3. In the process of scanning for errors that the program handles too long or hangs, you can turn off the computer or press the Reset button to restart it.

After scanning, the program will display a table of results informing you whether your computer has bad sectors or not, and how many bad sectors there are. in general, it lists quite a bit.

#2. Use DLC BOOT tool to check and fix Bad Sectors (recommended)

If you are  using DLC ​​BOOT  , you can do it quite easily because the HDD Regenerator software has also been integrated into this  computer rescue toolkit  . But in general, all the computer rescue tools that I introduce on the blog have basic software like this.

Update: You can use this new  DLC BOOT 2019  to be able to use the newer software included in that kit. Refer to  other computer rescue kits  if you like!

But here I take an example for the DLC BOOT tool. Please boot into USB BOOT and select Dos Program as shown below.

Next you also choose Hard Disk Tools. and follow the instructions as above.

#3. Check Bad Sectors right on Windows

If your computer can still access Windows, you can go to Windows to do it quite easily. (However, to scan and fix Bad Sectors, I still encourage you to use the usb boot tool, it will be better)

+ Step 1: you download this tool for HDD Regenerator:  Link Download  /  link redundancy /  link redundancy

+ Step 2: Please extract it => run the file hdd-regenerator_2011.exe and start the installation. The installation process is very easy, so I will not guide you further.

+ Step 3: Open the software, you will see a main interface as shown below. You will now have 3 options:

1. Click here to repair physical bad sectors…. : Scan and fix Bad Sectors errors right on Windows.
2. Bootable USB Flash: Support you to create USB boot to fix Bad Sectors errors.
3. Bootable Cd / DVD: Support you to create a bootable disk to fix Bad Sectors errors.

Here I will choose number (1) ie run directly on Windows.

A message appears, press NO to continue, if you press YES by mistake, the computer will restart.

Okey, in the next window, select the hard drive to scan => then click the Start Process button to start.

A familiar window will appear, with 4 options for you. But here I will enter 1 and press Enter, in the next interface you also choose 1 and press Enter again for the program to start scanning and fixing errors.

VI. Conclude

So I have completed the tutorial on using HDD Regenerator in Hiren's Boot to check and repair Bad Sector hard drive errors and share tips and experiences to recognize and minimize the condition of the drive. The hard drive suffers from this dangerous error. Hope the article is useful to you!

Good luck !!

Jessica Tanner

Update 16 May 2021