In previous articles, we have repeatedly mentioned such a phenomenon as a faulty (bad) block, but we still have not given an exact definition of what it is, what are the reasons for their occurrence, how to deal with them and whether it is necessary. In this article, we will look at the first two questions and give you some time to think and find solutions for yourself. Next time we’ll talk about methods of dealing with them.
So, by bad block we usually mean a specific section of the disk, normal operation with which is not guaranteed or is impossible at all. Such areas may contain various information, it can be user data or service information (otherwise called servo (obviously from the Latin servire or English serve - to serve), in this case this is fraught with consequences, the severity of which varies within very wide limits), although, of course, the best option there would be a lack of anything in this area (although you probably won’t have to deal with bad things in such areas). The appearance of such sectors can be due to various reasons; in one case, such sectors can be restored, in another it is impossible, in one case it is necessary to use certain methods of treatment and reassignment in another. But first, let's dispel some fairly common myths.
Myth one: there are no bad drives on modern hard drives. This is not true, it happens. By and large, the technology is the same as years ago, only improved and refined, but still not ideal (however, the ideal one is unlikely to be created on the basis of magnetic recording technologies).
Myth two: for hard drives equipped with SMART, this is not relevant (read: there cannot be bad ones). This is also not the case: it is relevant, no less than for hard drives without SMART (if there are any left). The concept of a bad sector is close and dear to her; this should have become clear from the relevant publications devoted to this technology (links at the end). The only thing is that SMART has taken on most of the worries about such sectors that were previously assigned to the user. And it can often happen that the user knows nothing at all and will not find out about the bad things that are happening on his screw, unless of course the situation is pathological. I've heard from users that this is how sellers sometimes justify their refusal to provide a warranty exchange for hard drives that have problems that have surfaced. The seller is, of course, wrong. SMART is not omnipotent, and no one has canceled the troubles yet.
In order to understand bad things and their varieties, let’s delve into the method of storing information on a hard drive, just a little bit. Let's clarify two points.
1. The unit of which the hard drive operates at a low level is the sector. In the physical space on the disk corresponding to the sector, not only the data itself is recorded, but also service information - identification fields and a checksum for it, data and a control code for them, a code for error recovery, etc. (not standardized and depends on the manufacturer and models). Based on the presence of identification fields, two types of records are distinguished - with and without identifier fields. The former is old and has given up his position in favor of the latter. Later it will become clear why I celebrate this. It is also important that there are controls in place for errors (which, as we will see, can be sources of errors).
2. When working with old hard drives, it was necessary to register their physical parameters in the BIOS, which were indicated on the label, and in order to uniquely address a data block, it was necessary to indicate the cylinder number, sector number on the track, and head number. Such work with the disk was completely dependent on its physical parameters. This was not convenient, and tied the hands of the developers in many matters. A solution was needed and it was found in the address translation. The one that interests us - it was decided to address the data in the drive with one parameter, and the function for determining the actual physical address assign this parameter to the controller hard drive. This gave tremendous freedom and compatibility.
The actual physical data of the drive was no longer important. It is only important that the number of logical blocks specified by the BIOS does not exceed the actual number. The creation of such a translator is of great importance for the issues of bad sectors too. And that's why. Processing old bad sectors hard drives was not perfect, it was carried out using the file system. The disc came with a sticker that indicated the addresses of defective blocks found by the manufacturer. The user himself manually entered this data into FAT, and thus excluded the operating system from accessing it.
The technology for making plates was imperfect then, and it is imperfect now. There are no methods for creating an ideal surface that does not contain a single bad block, contrary to the popular belief that the hard drive is supplied from the factory without them. As the volume of disks grew, the number of bad sectors when leaving the factory grew, and, it is clear that only up to a certain point the procedure for registering them in FAT could be done manually; it was necessary to find a way to mark bads, even though it is not known which file system will be used. The invention of the translator made it possible to solve these problems. A special protected area was allocated on the hard drive, where a translator was written, in which the correspondence of each logical block of a continuous chain and a real physical address was established.
If a bad block was suddenly discovered on the surface, it was simply skipped, and this logical block was assigned the address of the next physical available block. The translator was read from the disk when turned on. Its creation was (and is) carried out at the factory, and it is for this reason, and not because the manufacturer uses some kind of super technology, that the new disks do not contain bad blocks. Physical parameters were hidden (and they were too varied, since firms were free to produce their own low-level formats, and the user did not care), defects were flagged at the factory, versatility increased. Good as in a fairy tale.
Now let's return to bads and their varieties. Depending on the nature of origin, they can all be divided into two large groups: logical and physical.
Physical and logical defects
Surface defects can be associated with the gradual wear of the magnetic coating of the disks, tiny dust particles that have leaked through the filter, the kinetic energy of which, accelerated inside the drive to colossal speeds, is sufficient to damage the surface of the disks (however, most likely they will roll off the disk under the influence of centrifugal forces and will be delayed by the internal filter, but they may have time to do a mischief), the result of mechanical damage upon impact, in which small particles may be knocked out of the surface, which then, in turn, will also knock out other particles, and the process will proceed like an avalanche (such particles will also roll off the plates under the influence of centrifugal forces, but much longer and heavier, since they will be held by the forces of magnetic attraction. This is also fraught with the fact that the head, hovering at a very low altitude, will collide with them, which will cause its heating and deterioration of performance characteristics - distortions will occur signal, the result is reading errors), I’ve heard (I don’t have such statistics) that smoking on a computer can do the same thing, since tobacco tar can penetrate the air filter of a hard drive (which has one), causing the heads to stick there to the plates (damage to the surface and heads), simply settling on the surface, thereby changing the performance characteristics, etc.
Such sectors turn out to be unsuitable for circulation and should be excluded from circulation. It is not possible to restore them either at home or in service centers. It will be good if it is possible to at least recover information from them. The speed of the process of this type of surface destruction is individual. If the number of bad cases does not grow or grows extremely insignificantly, then there is no need to be seriously afraid (although backup still worth it) if the growth is rapid, then the disk will have to be replaced, and, moreover, very quickly. With this type of bad, you can reassign blocks to a backup surface: it makes sense in the absence of progression. But not about that now. This is if we talk about the data area. As already noted, service information is also stored on the plates. It may also be destroyed during use. This can be much more painful than a normal custom surface.
The fact is that servo information is actively used in the process of work: the servo marks stabilize the speed of rotation of the disks, holding the head above a given cylinder, regardless of external influences. Minor disruptions to servo information may go unnoticed. Severe damage to the servo format can render some part of the disk or the entire disk inaccessible. Since the servo information is used by the drive program and is critically important for ensuring normal functioning and, in general, due to its specificity, things are much more complicated with it. Some hard drives allow you to disable faulty servo tracks. Restoring them is only possible at the factory using special, expensive and complex equipment (let’s roughly estimate the costs of such a repair of an out-of-warranty hard drive and understand that it would be correct to call this type of bad problem incorrigible).
Physical bads can also include bad sectors, the appearance of which is caused by malfunctions of the electronic or mechanical part of the drive, for example, broken heads, serious mechanical damage as a result of an impact - jamming of the positioner coil or disks, displacement of the disks. The actions here can be different and depend on the specific situation, if, for example, the head is broken (such bad things appear because an attempt is made to access a surface that cannot be accessed (which does not mean that there is something wrong with surface)), then, for example, it can often be turned off (or it can be changed in specialized service centers, but the cost of the operation makes you seriously think about its feasibility (in most cases the answer is negative), unless, of course, we are talking about the need to restore extremely valuable information (but that's another conversation)).
In general, this type of damage is characterized by a catastrophic nature. Those. As we see, physical troubles cannot be treated, only some kind of “mitigation” of their presence is possible. With logical bad sectors the situation is simpler. Some of them are curable. Most cases are caused by recording errors. The following categories can be distinguished:
1. The simplest case: file system errors. The sector is marked in FAT as bad, but in fact it is not. Previously, this technique was used by some viruses, when on a small hard drive they needed to find a secluded place that was not accessible by simple means. Now this technique is not relevant, since hiding a couple of megabytes (or even a couple of tens of megabytes) in the depths of Windows is not difficult. In addition, someone could simply make a joke on an unlucky user (there were such programs). And in general, the file system is a fragile thing, it can be treated very easily and with absolutely no consequences.
2. Uncorrectable logical problems - typical for old hard drives that use records with identifier fields. If you have such a disk, then you may well encounter them. Caused by an incorrect format of the physical address recorded for this sector, a checksum error for it, etc. Accordingly, it is impossible to contact him. In fact, they are rebuildable, but at the factory. Since I have already said that recording technology without identifier fields is now used, this type can be considered irrelevant.
3. Correctable logical problems. A type of bad blocks that is not so rare, especially on some types of drives. The origin is mainly due to disk write errors. It is not possible to read from such a sector, since usually the ECC code in it does not correspond to the data, and writing is usually impossible, since before writing, a preliminary check of the space to be written is carried out, and since problems have already been detected with it, writing to this area is rejected. Those. It turns out that the block cannot be used, although physically the surface it occupies is in perfect order. Defects of this kind can sometimes be caused by errors in the hard drive firmware, can be caused by software or technical reasons(for example, power failure and fluctuations, the head moving to an unacceptable height during recording, etc.). But if it is possible to match the contents of the sector and its ECC code, then such blocks pass without a trace. Moreover, this procedure is not complicated, and the means for its implementation are widely available and, in general, harmless.
4. The appearance of bad blocks of this type on hard drives is due to the peculiarities of production technology: there are never two absolutely identical devices, some of their parameters will certainly differ. When preparing hard drives at the factory, for each one a set of parameters is determined that ensures the best functioning of this particular instance, the so-called adaptives. These parameters are saved, and if they are somehow mysteriously damaged, the result may be complete disk inoperability, unstable operation, or a large number of bad sectors appearing and disappearing in one place or another. There is nothing you can do about this at home, but everything can be set up at the factory or at a service center.
As you can see, only two types of logical bad blocks can actually be treated at home. Others, if necessary, can be replaced with backup ones, but cannot be cured. Nothing can be done about the third houses. We will talk about how and what needs to be done in the first two cases next time.
To be continued
If the computer suddenly begins to freeze, or when it boots, a check for hard disk (HDD) errors periodically starts, or data is no longer copied normally from the HDD - all this may indicate the presence of bad sectors on the disk that need to be eliminated.
Around HDD magnetic This method creates special, logically marked areas, or rings, called tracks, divided into clusters and sectors. Information on the disk is written to sectors of 512 or 4096 bytes, but is actually stored in clusters ranging in size from 1 to 128 sectors.
A broken (damaged, faulty, bad) sector on a HDD is a place that has lost its writing or reading potential, and the operating system (OS) cannot find data in it or write information to it.
Bad sectors occur either due to physical damage to the disk surface or due to software errors and are corrected using system utilities, in particular, "Chkdsk".
These utilities recover logical sectors by matching them to an index in the MFT (master file table) file, and mark physical sectors so that they are not used by the system.
Before using the chkdsk utility, you must close all running programs, because The utility will not be able to recover damaged sectors when they are used by the system.
Step 1. To do this, you need to press “Win” on the keyboard, and hold it down, “R” (Win is located between Ctrl and Alt on the left), and in the “Run” window that starts, type “taskmgr” and click “OK”.
Step 2. In the opened “Dispatcher” Windows tasks» go to the “Applications” tab and close all running ones one by one operating system applications by selecting them with the mouse button and clicking “End task”.
Step 4. In the window that appears, click on the “Service” tab and in the “Error-Checking” segment, click the “Check Now” button.
Step 5. The Check Disk dialog box will appear on the screen. If you need to check and fix only bad sectors, disable the “Automatically fix file system errors” checkbox (top item).
Step 6. Click the “Start” button to begin the process of checking and fixing bad sectors.
Step 7 If the HDD being checked is a boot disk for the OS, “Chkdsk” will offer to perform the selected procedures the next time it is launched. Click “Yes” as the answer.
The next time the system boots, a blue window with a countdown (timer) will appear. There is no need to press any buttons during this time. As soon as the countdown reaches zero, the disk check will begin. After it is completed, the computer will reboot on its own.
When "chkdsk" completes the recovery task bad sectors hard drive, it will create a report about it. A code of "0" means that no errors were found during the disk scan, and a code of "1" means that errors were found and corrected.
Important! If the disk check process fails, it means that there is a problem with the disk and it is important to create it to protect the data backup copy. In Windows XP and Windows 7, there is a utility built into the operating system called NTBackup for these purposes.
Fixing bad sectors in Windows 8 and Windows 10
Step 1. Open File Explorer Windows combination Win+E, right-click on the icon of the required HDD, and click “Properties”.
Step 2. Go to the "Tools" tab and click "Verify" (you may need to enter administrator account information at this step).
Step 3. The error checking scanner will tell you whether the hard drive has bad sectors or not. If no errors are found, the application will still allow you to run a search for errors on the disk. Click “Scan drive”.
Step 4. You will be able to use the disk during the test. If errors are found, they can be corrected. At the end of the disk scan, the system will issue a report on the results. Click "Close".
Reference! Despite the fact that Windows 8 and 10 allow you to use OS applications while the utility is running, this is not recommended to avoid interrupting the scanning process.
If the HDD has physical wear on its sections, there are “unstable” sectors, etc., the OS may “freeze” when the above-mentioned utilities are running. Forcibly interrupting their work can damage OS system files.
Important! Damage system files The OS requires loading the last known good OS configuration (using the F8 button) or Windows recovery With installation disk.
Despite the fact that there are no physical bad sectors, except for markings with using chkdsk, it is possible to reassign them (in English remap) or cut them off.
Determining the location and volume of bad sectors using the Victoria program.
Step 1. Install and run the Victoria program under account administrator. Select the Standard tab in the window. If there are several HDDs in the system, select the required one with the mouse on the right side of the window.
Step 2. To determine the location of bad sectors on the HDD, go to the “Tests” tab and click “Start”.
The example shows that from block No.771093375 there are:
- “candidates” with a read delay of 600 ms, there are 190 of them in the example;
- There are 8 bad sectors (Err) in the example. Just below the counter shows the figure 376507 MB (376 GB).
You can also see that from the 376 GB point you can cut off the entire HDD space to its end, cutting off the bad sectors grouped here in one place.
Reference! In the example presented, the beginning scanning hard disk (Start LBA) was installed manually from block No.750000000. When conducting a test scan of “your” HDD, this value does not need to be set.
The HDD shown in the example has an exact capacity of 465 GB, and the calculation of the cut volume will look like this: 465-376=89 GB. In this case, it is better to cut off the disk volume with a margin - for example, 100 GB, by possible appearance in this area there are additional bad sectors.
Trimming HDD using AOMEI Partition Assistant
To increase the speed of trimming bad sectors on the HDD to “acceptable”, it is desirable that it does not contain partitions at this time. Important data from the disk must be copied, if possible, before starting the procedure.
Step 1. Install and run the program. In the main window, select the desired HDD and click “Delete partition”.
Step 2. Select the “Quickly delete partition” option and click “OK”.
Step 3. Click "Apply".
Step 4. In the next window, click “Go” (you may need to restart the OS). The partition removal process will begin.
Step 5. An unallocated area (Unallocated) will appear in place of the disk. Select it and click “Create partition”.
Step 6. In the window that appears, click the “Advanced” button.
Step 7 In "How to create" select "Primary partition". When creating a disk, move the slider with the mouse by a certain amount, leaving an undistributed area where the bad sectors will be located.
Click OK.
Reference! The program has right and left sliders (delimiters). The delimiter that is required in the specific case of trimming the hard drive is used. In the example presented, the right slider is shifted to the left by 100 GB.
Step 8 Click "Apply".
Step 9 Click "Go".
Step 10 Click "Yes".
The process of creating a partition on the HDD will begin.
As a result, a partition will be created on the HDD, at the end of which there is unallocated space (Unallocated Area) with bad sectors.
Using the Remap function in Victoria
If the bad sectors marked in the program are not grouped nearby, but are distributed throughout the HDD, the remap function present in Victoria can help.
The remap function repeatedly writes to the problem sector, and if these attempts are unsuccessful, the sector is replaced by assigning its address to a healthy sector taken from a special place on the HDD.
Reference! In this technical scenario, you need to create a bootable USB drive (flash drive) containing the Victoria program, and after booting from the USB drive via DOS, you will get rid of bad sectors on the HDD.
In the video below you can see how these steps can be implemented in practice.
Video - Trimming a hard drive from bad sectors REMAP, Treating BAD sectors of HDD
Checking the HDD for bad sectors
After treating bad sectors, you can find out whether there are still . To do this, you need to manually run the “Chkdsk” check.
Press “Win+R” on the keyboard, and in the “Run” window that opens, type: chkdskH:/F/R, and “OK”.
Reference! Instead of “H” you need to type the letter of the person being checked hard section disk. The /F flag starts fixing file system errors, and the /R flag starts searching for bad sectors.
If no bad sectors are detected, at the end of the work “chkdsk” will display in a special window information about 0 KB located in bad sectors.
Physical damage to the HDD is often caused by defects in its manufacturing, overheating, scratches due to impacts, dust, etc. Software (logical) bad sectors are caused by a conflict software, viruses, sudden termination of a program or OS, including due to power problems.
Eliminating situations that could cause damage to HDD sectors will allow you to maintain the integrity of important data and avoid purchasing a new HDD if its physical resource is exhausted.
Video - How to remove bad sectors on a hard drive
We will tell you one simple and second more advanced way to check the health of your hard drive and fix bad sectors using HDD programs Scan and HDD Regenerator programs.
The hard drive has its own resource, so it is advisable to check its condition once a year.
How to check your hard drive for errors
Previously we wrote how to check HDD for the presence of bad sectors using the program. If the program shows problems with the hard drive, we will try to fix them.
What are bad blocks
In a nutshell, bad blocks (bad block) are damaged sectors on the hard drive into which information cannot be written or read. They appear over time in the process work hard drive or when the hard drive is hit while it is running.
How to remove bad blocks from a hard drive
First way, for advanced users who recover bad sectors using the HDD Regenerator program, read
Second way, for Dummies. We recommend replacing it if bad sectors appear on your hard drive. If this is not possible, we will try to slightly extend the life of your disk.
For this we need the HDDScan program. You can download it
During the scan, HDDScan will refer to bad sectors of the disk and the disk itself will mark them so that Windows system will no longer write your data there. This method doesn't offer much of a guarantee, but it is easy to use.
After downloading and unpacking, go to the folder with the program and launch it by clicking on the HDDScan file.
We see a window in which we must select the drive to be checked in Select Drive. Then click on the round button and select Surface Test from the drop-down menu( surface test).
In the window that appears, select Verify and click the Add Test button. The hard drive test has started.
In order to see the progress of the test and the result, double-click on your hard drive in the Test Manager window and select the Map tab in the window that appears.
The window shows the process of checking the hard drive, where we are interested in the Bads parameter. If after the entire check the number of Bads is not very large, 2-5 bad sectors, then your hard drive will still work for some time.
If the quantity is measured in hundreds or thousands, the disk is severely damaged and may fail at any minute.
If there are bad sectors, you need to check the disk once a week and see if the number of Bads is increasing.
The article contains a lot of information not only about the Victoria program, but also about the DMDE program, with which we will create a sector-by-sector image of a faulty hard drive; this also needs to be done correctly so that user data is not lost.
Hard drive test in Victoria and how to fix bad sectors (bad blocks).
Friends, if you are reading these lines, it means you have some kind of problem with hard drive, and how to choose a hard drive was discussed earlier in the article.
When do we think that something wrong is happening with our hard drive?
- It is impossible to copy the necessary information from a hard drive to another drive; when copying, the operating system freezes and only a reboot can save it.
- Windows can freeze unexpectedly at any stage of operation.
- It is impossible to reinstall the operating system, during the installation process it gets stuck on unpacking Windows files or the installer reports an error “The installation cannot continue...”, or Windows takes a very long time to install, for example several hours.
- When you turn on the computer it starts immediately Chkdsk utility and checks hard disk partitions for errors.
- The hard drive is beeping extraneous sounds(clicks, squeaks) and is periodically not detected in the BIOS.
- Download the Victoria program to work directly in the operating system Windows XP, 7, 8, 10
Go to the official website of the program and select the version for Windows. I advise you to download the Victoria 4.3 beta version, since Victoria 4.46 beta does not always work correctly.
Victoria for working from a boot disk
We go to the official website of the program and select.
We also need Victoria on the boot disk, but we will consider working with this version second. If you do not have a disk drive, then we will make a bootable USB flash drive with the Victoria program.
So, let's go, firstly, in the Victoria program we will accurately determine the numbers of bad sectors (bad blocks), then we will make a sector-by-sector copy of the hard drive and thereby save the user data, and then we will hide the bad sectors of the bad blocks (remap) in the Victoria program. We will also learn how to do a “Record across the entire clearing” (Erase test), that is, when a bad sector is detected, rewrite the entire block (256 sectors) of the hard drive with zeros.
For example, let's take a real hard drive with bad sectors:
Friends, the minimum unit of information on a hard disk is a sector; the volume of user data is 512 bytes; if the information in a sector cannot be read, then the sector is unreadable or, in other words, faulty. All operating system freezes occur when reading information from such a sector.
This hard drive WDC WD5000AAKS-00A7B2 (500 GB capacity) is really faulty,
The operating system on it constantly freezes and periodically when loading it starts checking the hard drive for errors. The last straw for the owner of the hard drive was that it was impossible to copy important data to another disk, and even reinstalling the operating system ended with yet another hang on unpacking Windows files. Replacing the installation disk with the operating system did not yield anything, and the hang was repeated at another stage of the installation.
That’s when the question arose about what to do with this hard drive, because one of the partitions contained important data and needed to be copied.
Victoria launch:
Launch the Victoria program as administrator. We agree with all warnings about working on a 64-bit system.
Select the initial tab Standard. If we have several hard drives, in the right part of the window, select the desired hard drive with the left mouse, in our case WDC WD5000AAKS-00A7B2
and go to the SMART tab,
press the Get SMART button, the GOOD message will light up to the right of the button and S.M.A.R.T. will open. the hard drive we have selected.
S.M.A.R.T. This screw turned out to be not the best. Why? Read our first article in the series about the Victoria program. Here I will only say that as many as four attributes of S.M.A.R.T. glow red, including the most important parameter, attribute
5 Reallocated Sector Count - (remap), indicating the number of reassigned sectors, this means the spare sectors on the backup tracks are running out and soon there will be nothing to reassign bad sectors with.
Go to the Tests tab.
Hard drive surface test in Victoria program
On the right side of the program window, check the Ignor item and the read item, then click Start. A simple hard drive surface test will run without error correction. This test will not bring any good or bad effects on your hard drive, but when the test is finished, we will know what condition our hard drive is in.
The surface of the hard drive begins to be scanned and after a while bad sectors are detected. After 40 minutes, Victoria gives us the following result:
A lot of good sectors with a good read latency of no more than 5 ms - 3815267
There are also sectors with a bad read delay of 200 ms
There are no sectors with unsatisfactory read latency of more than 600 ms (candidates for bad blocks), but...
What’s really bad is that there are full-fledged bad sectors (bad blocks), the information from which could not be read at all - 13
13 bad sectors (bad blocks), they all start in the area 6630400 and end at 980000000, that is, scattered throughout the hard drive. Bad block numbers must be written down. Friends, it is quite possible that all our problems with the hard drive can be due to these 13 bads and we need to get rid of them, but first we will make a sector-by-sector image of the diseased screw.
The hard drive of the victim WDC WD5000AAKS-00A7B2 (capacity 500 GB) was divided into two partitions: drive D: with the operating system, capacity 120 GB, and drive E: with data, capacity 345 GB.
Before working with the Victoria program, let’s protect ourselves and make a full image of the E drive partition: the volume is 345 GB and we will extract the data from the image. We will create the image in another DMDE program and place it on another physical disk SAMSUNG HD403LJ (400 GB capacity). I will show you how to do this.
Managing my computer's disks
Important data is located on the New Volume (E:) with a capacity of 347 GB of the WDC WD5000AAKS hard drive (total volume 500 GB), which means we will create an image of the partition (E:)
We will create a sector-by-sector image of the partition (E:) on a SAMSUNG HD403LJ hard drive (400 GB capacity), there is only one partition without data on it. New volume (F:)
The third physical disk in the system is solid state drive SSD (120 GB capacity) disk (C:), it contains our running Windows 8.1 operating system, which is where we are now.
Creating a sector-by-sector image of the entire hard drive or the desired partition in the DMDE program
Also DMDE is very good tool to create sector-by-sector copies of a faulty hard drive.
We go to the DMDE program website http://dmde.ru/download.html and download the program, click GUI for Windows.
DMDE is downloaded in an archive, unzip it and run the file dmde.exe.
Then select the language Russian.
We accept the terms of the License Agreement. In the initial window of the program, we need to select or Physical device(that is, a complete hard drive) or a data partition.
We only need volume E:, so left-click on our WDC WD5000AAKS hard drive, then check Logical drives
and partition (E:), then click OK.
Menu. Create image/clone...
Place for recording, click Disk.
New volume F: and OK. It is necessary that the partition on which the sector-by-sector image of the faulty hard drive (or partition with unreadable data) will be created should be no smaller in volume than this disk.
On the new volume F: all data will be deleted, we agree Yes.
The creation of a sector-by-sector copy of the partition (E:) of the diseased hard drive WDC WD5000AAKS begins on a new volume (F:) of another healthy hard drive of the SAMSUNG HD403LJ drive, which continues for 6 hours (the image is removed from particularly “bad” screws for several days) and freezes completely at 83 percent, after waiting a couple of hours, I clicked the Abort button!
Friends, if we interrupt the creation of the image of a sector-by-sector division at the very end (after all, 83%), then two options await us, as Suvorov used to say - “either the chest in the crosses, or the head in the bushes.”
After interrupting the operation, we go to the New volume F: and see if there is any data on it and... they are there, the DMDE program managed to transfer everything we needed to the F: volume, almost all the data is read without errors. So our case is not complicated and
the bads are mostly software ones
But in some cases, not everything will be so rosy, and when we try to enter a partition with a sector-by-sector copy, we will be greeted with this error: No access to F:\ . The file or folder is damaged. Reading is impossible.
No access to F:\. File system not recognized. Make sure everything required system drivers loaded and the volume is not damaged.
But even in this case, we will not give up and will do so.
What to do if creating a sector-by-sector image fails?
Friends, the process of creating a sector-by-sector copy does not always end successfully even after several hours, but if you stop creating a sector-by-sector copy, the data in it may become unreadable.
Or, in the process of creating a sector-by-sector copy, the following error will appear: “The request was not completed due to an input/output error on the device” (see screenshot below), indicating that DMDE was unable to read the information in the bad sector (the sector number is indicated in the error) in this case click
Repeat, there will be a second attempt to read information from this sector and it may end in success. If this error with the same sector will appear again, then click
Ignore and the creation of a sector-by-sector image will continue, but we will lose information in this sector and, as a result, no file will open in the sector-by-sector copy. If the "The request was not completed due to an I/O error on the device" error appears too often, you can select
Ignore all and all such errors will be skipped, or you can press the button
Parameters and configure the DMDE program accordingly for such a severe case. Click the Options button in this window.
You need to be careful in the parameters, as you can configure a lot of things here. For example, force DMDE to create a sector-by-sector image from a hard drive not from the beginning, but from the end, for this you need to check the box
Reverse the move, sometimes it brings results.
And click Options again.
In this window, check the Don't wait if the device is not ready - Always check box. If you select this option, the operation will continue even
in case of an error due to the device not being ready. If you do not check this option, then on some “poor” hard drives a warning will be displayed with the expected user reaction, that is, the image will not be created automatically.
Number of auto retries on CRC error - 0
Number of auto retries if sector not found - 0
Fill bad sectors with hex
Then OK and OK, the creation of the sector-by-sector image begins.
Left click to enlarge image
This setting option also proved to be workable.
Ignore I/O errors - Always
Don't wait if device isn't ready - Always
Number of retries on CRC error - 0
In general, I advise you to study the manual for the DMDE program http://dmde.ru/manual.html or http://dmde.ru/docs/DMDE-manual-ru.pdf, you can also wait for our article on creating a sector-by-sector image of a faulty hard drive various programs, in it we will even consider the creation bootable flash drive with the DMDE program.
- If DMDE does not help you, then you can try other programs, for example Acronis True Image. Of course, there are still ways in which you can make a sector-by-sector image of a faulty screw, for example, booting from some operating system based on Linux, for example Ubuntu, but I will not describe the process itself here and would rather write a separate article. You can also run the safecopy utility under Linux.
- What to do if you still cannot make a sector-by-sector copy of the hard drive is up to you to decide. You can contact a good and proven data recovery service and specialists will take a sector-by-sector copy of your hard drive using special expensive equipment, for example using the same PC−3000 complex. If you don’t mind your data, then you can take a risk and run algorithms in the Victoria program that rid the surface of your hard drive of bad sectors (bad blocks), how to do this is written below, the hard drive can come back to life after this operation.
- Important: Kazansky (developer of the Victoria program) promises that the most innovative algorithm for hiding bad blocks BB = Advanced REMAP is NOT destructive for data, but in some cases it can be destructive for your files, since even the most advanced Victoria algorithm Advanced REMAP hides defects (remap), this is, in any case, a change in the translation of the screw, which means the loss of user data (details below. I want to say that sometimes it happened that a Victoria hard drive would cure bad problems and you would even be able to copy information from such a hard drive, but unfortunately not All information is readable.
So, in our case, we made a sector-by-sector copy of the diseased hard drive, namely the new volume E: the DMDE program was able to do it, although in some places DMDE froze a little, but everything ended successfully. The sector-by-sector copy of the new volume (E:) is an exact copy and is located on volume F: All existing data is successfully read and copied.
The main problem has been solved and user data has been saved, now we proceed to the hard drive treatment procedure.
How to get rid of bad sectors (bad blocks) using the Victoria program
Friends, let’s now imagine that we were unable to make a sector-by-sector image of a hard drive with bad blocks and we couldn’t come up with anything else and decided to rid our hard drive of bad blocks in the Victoria program, in the hope that after hiding the bad sectors we will be able to read and copy the information to your hard drive.
Note: it is difficult to rid a screw of bad blocks in a running Windows, especially if, for example, you have a laptop with one hard drive and an operating system is installed on the same hard drive and you want to cure the same operating system from bad blocks. In such cases, create a bootable USB flash drive with Victoria, boot the laptop from it and get rid of bad sectors. I propose to create a bootable USB flash drive in the next article, but now we will find out how this is done directly in a running operating system, I will show you everything.
Remap
In the main Victoria window, check the Remap item, which denotes the algorithm for reassigning bad blocks to sectors from backup tracks during the scanning process. Test in Read mode, that is, from beginning to end and click on the Start button.
While the scanning is underway, let's talk about this.
1. What happens with this Remap algorithm? An attempt is made (several times) to force information to be written to the bad sector of the hard drive; if the attempt is successful, then the sector becomes healthy and is removed from the list of bad blocks (remap does not occur). If the write attempt is unsuccessful, then the diseased sector is reassigned to a healthy sector from a hard drive backup track specially designed for such cases.
2. Remap is the reassignment (replacement) of a diseased sector, assigning its LBA number to another physically healthy sector from the reserve track. Information from the sector (at the time of reassignment) hangs in the screw's RAM, and as soon as the sector is reassigned, it is written back.
Remap is basically not destructive for information; if your data is lost, it will only be in one bad sector, but you must admit that the data in the bad block was already unreadable. In the second case, the data will simply be transferred to the sector from the backup track.
Result. As I said, it is difficult to fix anything in a running Windows and Victoria cannot perform a Remap. After 20 minutes, the same result, 13 bad blocks, and you and I will have to make a bootable flash drive with Victoria and work in DOS.
How to scan a specific area on your hard drive in Victoria
If you know the exact addresses of bad sectors, you can set the exact scanning parameters in the Victoria program. For example, we know that our bad blocks start from sector 770,000,000, then in the Start LBA: item, set this number here and Victoria program It is from sector 770,000,000 that it will begin scanning and correcting the surface of the hard drive, also, if you set the number you need in the End LBA item: then Victoria will finish scanning on the sector you need.
Erase algorithm
Friends, you can ask me, what will happen if we use the Erase test or is there also Write?
When Erase detects an unreadable sector, it forcibly rewrites the entire block of 256 sectors with zeros (be careful, in some cases your data on the hard drive will be deleted).
- Most often, you come across software (program) bads that are removed most quickly by resetting them - the Erase algorithm, and even if writing to the zero sector is unsuccessful, Remap may well occur, since the hard drive firmware may consider such a sector to be faulty. If Erase does not help, then you can choose Remap, but as we know, the chances that Remap will be performed in a running Windows are low.
- In some cases, software bads can be removed even by simple formatting using Windows itself.
I don’t want to experiment with our WDC WD5000AAKS hard drive, since in the next article I plan to cure it of bad blocks in DOS mode using a bootable flash drive with the Victoria program and still return to the owner the hard drive cured of bad blocks with intact data.
I'll just show you on another hard drive how to run this test in a running Windows.
In the main window of Victoria, select our hard drive and go to the Tests tab, check the Erase item (be careful, in some cases your data on the hard drive will be deleted) - if an unreadable sector is detected, it forcibly rewrites the entire block of 256 sectors with zeros, naturally the information is in the entire block sectors are completely lost, but if an overwrite occurs, the block returns to work (becomes healthy).
Test in Read mode
That is, from beginning to end and click Start.
Often, when “resetting” in a running Windows, the following errors will appear:
Block (bad sector number) try Erase 256 sectors. It was not possible to rewrite the block of sectors.
Write algorithm
The Write mode does not look for any bad sectors, but simply immediately erases all the information on the hard drive by filling all sectors with zeros, this is what repairmen say in the jargon of “Write across the entire clearing”, this algorithm is able to cure a hard drive from bads and simply bad sectors with great read delay, but after such a test it will be impossible to restore data on the hard drive, so first copy everything important files to a portable hard drive.
For those who are not very familiar with a computer and do not know what DOS is, it is better not to repeat everything that will be described in this article, since here we will talk about how to restore damaged HDD sectors.
And so you discovered that you constantly have a disk check when loading, or your hard drive has started to slow down a lot. You scanned with some utility in read mode or some program from this article. Thus, you are convinced that you have slow sectors that respond longer than 500 ms, or BAD sectors, then this article is for you.
How to fix bad sectors
If your disk periodically disappears or is not visible at all, then this is most likely a problem with the controller, cable (cable) or power supply, but we will talk about BED sectors and very slowly readable cells, in general about software hard mistakes disk.
So you discovered (program HDD checks) that you have slow sectors on your hard drive (usually red or brown). The decision to apply low-level formatting (Erase), we do it with a program MHDD and just forget about programs running under Windows, they won’t help you like HDDscan And Victoria.
Attention!!! All the operations described below can lead to partial or complete removal information on your hard disk drive (HDD).
So, we boot from the boot disk where there is this program MHDD, these are collections STEA Live, Hiren boot cd or do it yourself boot disk or flash drive.
Stage 1. Getting rid of slow (red) sectors
Launch MHDD, type the command erase, the list of all commands can be viewed using the F1 command, the program will ask you to specify the scanning range, do not change anything, press Enter by default, wait. If there are red sectors left, you will have to run the command Erase waits
Stage 2. Getting rid of BAD sectors
We launch MHDD, type the Remap command, and the program will automatically scan the hard drive and replace bad sectors with reserve ones. I do not recommend running this program when large quantities red and bad sectors in hard disk partitions.
You can also clean the HDD of bad sectors manually, not the entire hard drive, but partially by address range.
Execute the command SCAN, as soon as the BAD sector appears, remember its number, stop the ESC process, run the command Erase and indicate the range in in this case if there is one bad sector, then its number and the next one, that is, add one, then run the command again Scan and look at the appearance of new bad sectors and repeat the procedure.
The video shows this whole process well:
If scanning takes a lot of time for you, then no program will help you. And you will have to buy already new hard disk.
P.S.: I am attaching a link to a video showing the operation of the MHDD program for general information.
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18 comments for the entry How to restore damaged bad (BAD) HDD sectors
Dear yura200, if you read the article carefully, it says that Erase- this is low-level formatting, well, I hope the word formatting, do you understand what it does?)
yura200, I am very sorry that you experienced such difficulties, but everything you do is your personal desire. The third paragraph in the text:
So you have discovered (HDD checking program) that you have slow sectors on your hard drive (usually red or brown). The decision to apply low-level formatting (Erase)
P.S.: And just for fun, you can look at the translation, it also says a lot erase- erase, cross out (from memory).
Danila, Are you sure that you have an HDD in your laptop? and not SSD, because the MHDD and Victoria programs do not work with second disks.
Andrey, unless you need to pull the remaining data from the hard drive, but I would not use such a drive in the future.
Max yeah that's really bad
Well, you're giving a hint. booted from MHDD wrote as you have in the first point Erase and all Windows was erased, even restoring through the archive right now didn’t help new Windows I bet.
So why write the first paragraph, write erase, it’s good that after installing Windows I was able to roll back everything right now. The most interesting thing is that I wanted to start this business with drive D and there were pictures of family videos, I would have grabbed it in grief, but it’s good that MHDD did not see drive D and only C drive was formatted. I'm pushing here so that others don't wipe out the whole screw. And where in the text do you say that Erase is formatting? When I used Mhdd I used erase when erasing bad blocks. Correct the text.
Good afternoon.
Can you tell me how to get the program to work on a laptop? Neither MHDD nor Victoria can see my hard drive.
Dear! If you see orange or red, or even an X in a square on your disk during the test, then don’t torture it, it’s finished. They are just trying to support people somehow during a stroke, and then you see what they become, but the glands, after you have sent photos, are the only way to a well-deserved rest. And don't listen to or read nonsense about restoration.
That’s right, on the ASUS X552EA laptop the MHDD program does not see a 500 GB WD HDD (not an SSD, and not a hybrid, regular one).
I played with the BIOS - this way and that... alas, the MHDD program opens from the bootable flash drive, but does not see the disk, no matter how hard I tried.
It is necessary to set the HDD operating mode to SATA Standard IDE INSTEAD OF SATA AHCI
I want to check and fix this problem in dos (I checked it in winows with Victoria before) But I can’t switch from AHCI to IDE in the BIOS, there’s nothing similar. HP laptop (they wrote that they removed this function) How can you help?
Place this hard drive in the system unit and launch it there and, if necessary, configure the BIOS.
Respect and respect to the author! The user does not have the funds for a new hard drive, but a system engineer is vital... so I found, along the above path, that in addition to the first 42 gigs of crosses, there are two more thirds of the workspace... and the person is grateful!
Thank you very much for the article!
It was necessary to restore the functionality of the old disk. I scanned its state with the MHDD program (found on an old CD resuscitator), found several dozen “red” sectors, but did not know that the ERASE command was exactly what I needed. I thought it was a simple erasure of information.
Now, after processing the disk with ERASE, I scanned it again. The result is not a single BED!
The question is, if there are problems in the first 4 gigs and the last 4 gigs, and there are 2047 of them, is there any point in straining to recover?
Is 653 bads really bad? Erase won't help?
Hello bortvlad. Is it worth bothering with treating bad diseases? Windows already monitors and edits cells as best it can. And he won’t write down the information in the bads. The loss of speed is negligible. And replacing cells from the backup area changes the desired table, which, in my opinion, will only accelerate the death of the HDD. If you really want low-level formatting and use the disk for archiving movies, games... What can you say about this software: Low Level Format Tool?