• How to repair sectors on a hard drive. How to fix bad hard drive sectors

    We will tell you one simple and second, more advanced way to check the status of your hard drive and fix bad sectors using HDDScan and program HDD Regenerator.

    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 hard drive 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 his 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. Hard test disk is running.

    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.

    In this article we will talk about recovering bad sectors of a hard drive and the reasons for their occurrence. Step by step instructions will help you prepare for this procedure and cope with it yourself.

    What are bad sectors?

    Let's take a quick look at the structure of the hard drive. It consists of several separate disks, above which there are magnetic heads designed for reading and writing information. When storing data, the heads magnetize certain areas of the disk, which is divided into tracks and smaller components - sectors. It is in them that units of information are stored. If a sector becomes unreadable, it is called “broken”.

    Several signs indicate the occurrence of such a problem:

    • creaks, rattles, tapping when the disk is operating;
    • heating the surface of the HDD (this should not happen under normal conditions);
    • common errors when working and starting the operating system.

    Typical reasons

    The main reasons for the appearance of broken hard drive segments are:


    Also, malfunctions in the hard drive may occur due to mechanical damage. Often leads to them fall hard disk or computer, resulting in damage to the magnetic surface (for example, during transportation). Non-working parts also appear due to manufacturing defects. IN in this case they may not appear immediately, but “crumble” over time, quickly increasing their number to a critical level.

    Important! If you suspect mechanical damage or defects, you should immediately contact specialists or exchange the hard drive under warranty.

    Recovering bad HDD sectors using Victoria

    If the appearance of broken segments is due to software glitches, then they can be restored using specialized software. One such program for recovering bad hdd sectors is Victoria. The utility is available in two versions - for Windows and DOS. Recovery via DOS will be the most effective, since when the OS is running, some sectors may be occupied and therefore unavailable for scanning.

    Victoria HDD - diagnostic program

    Scanning

    To get started, we will need to do a little preparation. First, you will need a disk with a program image recorded on it or a bootable USB flash drive. If everyone can cope with recording an image, then creating a flash drive may be difficult.

    Let's take a closer look at this step:


    Pay attention! The program takes up very little space, so after installing it, the drive can be used to store other information. To avoid accidentally deleting files necessary for the utility to work, it is recommended to select a separate folder for them.

    Let's start the scanning process:


    Here we need a point "Reallocated sector count", which displays the number of fragments located in the reserve zone, as well as "Current pending sectors", where parts that cannot be read are displayed. If their number is not very high, then the disk can be restored.

    Hard drive recovery

    Let's figure out exactly how this process happens. Problem segments can be roughly divided into two types. The first ones are not readable due to the discrepancy between the information stored in them and its checksums.

    This error occurs during a power outage, when new data has already been written, but the checksums remain old. They simply cease to be recognized and are restored quite easily - by formatting them and recording the correct amounts.

    The second type occurs as a result of mechanical damage. In this case, recovery is more difficult, but still possible. Restoring the functionality of such parts is carried out through the use of reserve areas that are on each hard drive.

    We begin to recover each of these types of errors.

    Video: HDD - “healing” bad sectors

    Let's try to fix it first bad sectors by erasing the information stored in them:

    • press F4 and get to the verification menu;
    • in the menu for selecting operations with unreadable sectors, indicate “BB: Erase 256 sect” and press “Enter”.

    A long process of scanning and repairing bad sectors of the HDD will begin. If the program finds a bad sector, it will try to erase it, thereby correcting the error. If there is a mechanical defect, an error will be reported. In any case, you must wait until the check is completed and then separately correct the sectors with physical defects.

    To do this:


    Now the recovery operation will work on a different principle, trying not to erase bad sectors, but to replace them with space from the reserve area.

    Important! If there are a lot of such sectors, then the reserve space may run out. This will be reported special message, and further recovery will become impossible.

    After successfully recovering bad sectors on your hard drive, it is recommended to full check file system for errors.

    This can be done using the CHKDSK utility or in the following way:


    Photo: checking the disk for errors

    Attention! So that the system not only finds, but also corrects problems, before starting the scan, select “Automatically fix system errors».

    The methods described above will help you easily cope with non-critical cases of problem sectors, find and fix them. By following our instructions exactly, any user can do this on their own, even without computer education. We hope that this information was useful for you.

    Bad sectors on the hard drive

    What are bad sectors on a disk? First, let's briefly look at the organization of information storage on a hard drive.

    A hard drive actually usually consists of several magnetic disks. Magnetic reading heads move above the rotating disks. When recording, the heads magnetize certain areas of the disk, thereby recording zeros and ones - that is, information. Information is not written anywhere, but in strictly defined areas of the disk. The disk is divided into tracks, and they, in turn, into sectors. Information is recorded in these sectors.

    In some cases, information from a sector on a disk cannot be read. This sector is called broken. The reason for the formation of bad sectors may be sudden shutdown power supply during hard disk write operation, shock during operation, overheating or physical wear and tear and marriage. Most often, bad sectors on a hard drive are formed as a result of the first two reasons.

    Program for checking disk and recovering bad sectors Victoria

    Victoria is a free program by Belarusian programmer Sergei Kazansky for restoring bad sectors and checking the hard drive. This program also has a Windows version. But I strongly recommend using the DOS version for more reliable operation of the hard drive. Below you will find instructions for working with the DOS version of Victoria.

    The Victoria program allows you to view the SMART table of your hard drive, scan the disk surface for bad and hard-to-read sectors, restore bad sectors, and completely erase all sectors on the hard drive ( low level formatting). So, let's get down to business!

    Checking the disk for bad sectors

    Before you start checking and repairing bad sectors of your hard drive, you need to make preparations. It is necessary to properly configure the hard drive controller in the BIOS so that the program can work correctly with the hard drive.

    It is necessary to set the SATA controller mode in the BIOS to IDE. IN AHCI mode Victoria will not be able to recognize the hard drive and will not be able to work with it.

    Now you can boot into DOS using a bootable USB flash drive and launch Victoria.

    First of all, we need to select the IDE channel with which we will work, that is, to which the hard drive being tested is connected.

    To do this, press the "P" (Latin) key. In the menu that appears, select a channel and press Enter. If your drive is connected to a SATA port, then most likely you need to select Ext. PCI ATA/SATA. If your drive has an IDE connector, then select the port to which it is connected.

    If there is a SATA controller correctly configured in the BIOS on the motherboard (in IDE mode), the program will display a list of channels. It is necessary to enter from the keyboard the number of the channel to which the drive being tested is connected. In our case it is "3".

    Enter the number "3" and press Enter. Once the channel has been selected, it must be initialized in hard program disk. To do this, press the key F2. A service message will appear on the screen. hard information disk (its model, volume and other information). If this happens, then you did everything correctly and the program was able to connect to the disk.

    Now the first thing you should do is look at the SMART table of the hard drive. In many cases, the information from it can clarify the situation even without scanning the surface. To view a SMART disk in Victoria 3.52 you need to press the key F9 .

    In the table, we are primarily interested in two points: Reallocated sector count And Current pending sectors . The first parameter shows the number of sectors transferred to the reserve zone (restored or remap), the second parameter shows the number of suspicious sectors, that is, which the hard drive could not read for one reason or another.

    As can be seen in the figure above, the number of recovered sectors per this disk very large (767). This indicates that the disk most likely has some problems with the surface of the disk. In addition, SMART also shows the presence of suspicious sectors, which confirms the version of damage to the disk surface. Such a disk may be able to be recovered, but it should not be used in the future. This large number bad sectors indicates that the disk is no longer reliable. It is better to replace such a disk with a new one and clone information from the defective disk to it. But first, in any case, you need to try to restore damaged sectors on your hard drive.

    To return from SMART, press any key.

    Recovering bad sectors of a hard drive

    Now let's look at the question of how to recover bad sectors on a disk. Fixing bad sectors is actually not difficult. To begin with, you can simply scan the disk for bad sectors, but we will immediately enable the recovery function.

    Now we should say a little about the mechanism for restoring bad sectors or bad blocks. There are two types of unreadable sectors.

    In the first case, the sector cannot be read due to a mismatch between the information written in it and the checksum at the end of the sector. This problem can happen if the power is suddenly turned off during the recording process. That is, when the information in the sector has managed to be recorded, but the checksum remains old. Such bad sectors are not inherently defective. They just contain conflicting information that the hard drive cannot recognize. Such bad sectors are treated by erasing the information in them and writing new correct checksums. After this, the sector becomes readable and writable.

    In the second case, there is physical damage to the sector (demagnetization, scratch, etc.). Such a defect may occur, for example, due to a shock or overheating of the hard drive during operation. In this case, the process of fixing bad sectors is more complicated. Each disk has a spare unused area. That is, any disk actually has a slightly larger capacity than is actually used. This area is used to redirect unreadable sectors to it. A new physical address in the spare area for the defective sector is entered into the disk table. The logical address remains the same. That is, the sector seems to remain the same, but in reality it is located in a different place (remap). This approach, of course, reduces the read and write speed in the area of ​​the disk with the transferred sector, since the magnetic heads have to move to the end of the disk (to the spare area) when accessing the redirected sector. But this approach is justified when the number of forwarded sectors is small and the data processing speed is reduced slightly.

    Restoring bad sectors using the Victoria 3.52 program

    Now let's put the theory into practice. To open the disk check menu, press the key F4. In the dialog box that appears, move the cursor to the item for selecting actions with unreadable sectors and with the cursor on the keyboard, scrolling to the right or left, select the item BB: Erase 256 sect, as shown in the picture. Now press Enter and the process of scanning the disk surface for bad blocks will start. The process is quite long. If you want to interrupt the scanning process, press Esc on your keyboard.

    If a bad sector is detected, the program will try to erase it. If the sector is physically healthy, then this attempt will be successful. There will be no information left in the sector, but it will be possible to use it in the future. Don't worry too much about the information. If the sector is unreadable, then it will be practically impossible to extract it from there, so when erasing the sector, there is no additional information doesn't get lost. If the sector is unreadable due to a physical defect in the disk, then an attempt to erase the unreadable sector will fail and an error will be reported, as in the figure below.

    Even if the process of erasing sectors ends with an error, I recommend not stopping the scan, since the disk may have bad sectors of both the first and second options. And if a bad sector can be restored by erasing, then it is better to do so than to transfer it to the reserve area (which is quite limited).

    If it was not possible to restore bad sectors by erasing, then you should try transferring unreadable sectors to the reserve area (remapping). Press the key F4. This time use the arrows to select BB: Classic REMAP as shown in the picture. After that press Enter. The scanning process will begin again. But this time, when a bad sector is detected, the Victoria program will try to perform redirection and move the bad block to the backup area. On some drives, the spare area is very small, so if it runs out of space, the attempt will fail. In our case, everything went well (picture below).

    Bad sectors on the hard drive have been successfully restored. Now you need to check the file system for errors (for example, through ERD Commander utility chkdsk or booting into Windows, if possible) or format the disk. After this, you can continue to use your hard drive without any problems.

    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,A 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?

    1. Cannot copy from hard drive necessary information to another drive, when copying, the operating system freezes and only a reboot can save it.
    2. Windows can freeze unexpectedly at any stage of operation.
    3. 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.
    4. When you turn on the computer it starts immediately Chkdsk utility and checks hard disk partitions for errors.
    5. The hard drive is beeping extraneous sounds(clicks, squeaks) and is periodically not detected in the BIOS.
    6. 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. burn 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:

    So many good sectors with good read latency 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 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 operating system volume 120 GB and disk 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 New volume(F:)

    Third physical disk in the system, it is solid state SSD drive(volume 120 GB) drive (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 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 WDC WD5000AAKS hard drive begins on a new volume (F:) of another healthy hard drive SAMSUNG drive HD403LJ, which lasts 6 hours (it takes several days to remove the image from particularly “bad” screws) and freezes completely at 83 percent; after waiting a couple of hours, I pressed 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 is in the crosses, or the head is 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 the creation of 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 error "The request was not completed due to an I/O error on the device" appears too often, you can select

    Ignore everything and everyone similar 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 checkbox. 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 it will cure Victoria hard disk from bads and you will even be able to copy information from such a hard drive, but unfortunately not all the 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. A sector-by-sector copy of the new volume (E:) is exact copy and located on volume F: All available data is successfully read and copied.

    The main problem has been solved and the 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 call “Write all over the clearing”, this algorithm is able to cure a hard drive from bad ones and simply bad sectors with a long read delay, but after such a test it will be impossible to restore data on the hard drive, so copy everything first important files to a portable hard drive.

    One of the biggest troubles for PC owners can be damaged sectors on the hard drive. Such sectors are called “broken,” and the hard disk itself with such damage is said to have begun to “crumble.”

    The location of such damage directly determines the ability to turn on/off the computer. If the sectors where the operating system files are located are damaged, the PC will not turn on. If we are talking about sectors where other files are located, then the user will have the opportunity to boot the machine. Depending on this feature, the method is chosen eliminating hard disk.

    What to do

    With this type of damage, you need to open “My Computer” and right-click required disk. Next, from the proposed options, select “Properties”, then “Service” and “Run check”. You need to check the box “Automatically correct system errors” and “Scan and repair bad sectors" By clicking "Start", the user launches hard check disk for damage. After this, you are instructed to restart the PC.

    In the second case, you should have a disk with a virtual operating system or an installation disk at hand. Windows disk. To start the computer, you need to insert the disk into the drive and turn on the machine normal mode. All further actions similar to the steps described in the previous paragraph. When working with installation disk A menu will appear with the option to select the “Restore System” command. As a result, the hard drive will be checked for bad sectors, and any damage found will be repaired.

    Special programs

    You can also check and restore your hard drive using a program launched through the recovery console. The Recovery Console itself can be launched without boot disk. To do this, press the F8 key and select safe mode, supporting command line. After the console is loaded, the partition with Windows installed on it is selected. It is necessary to ensure that the partition matches the disk after this administrator. After the appropriate prompt appears in the line, enter the disk name, route and file name. Using the “Enter” key, the user starts the recovery process.

    Thus, when checking the “C” partition of the hard drive, you need to launch the system recovery console and issue the command chkdsk c: /f /r. It’s easy to prevent such a nuisance in the future - to do this you need to acquire special programs eg MHDD. Such

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