Disk Drive has one bad sector, worth doing anything drastic?

[TheLoneWolf527]

Earlier tonight I got the message saying Windows has detected a hard disk problem and wasn't really sure what to do. I downloaded Eassos PartitionGuru since it seemed like it would give me a detailed description of things and doing a scan informed me that my computer has only one bad sector. Well over 99% of my sectors were "Excellent" a small amount were "Good" but one was labeled "Damaged" with the message "IO Device Timeout." I've seen some places saying to get a new hard drive or wipe this one clean if you have a bunch of bad sectors, but I'm not sure what to do with only one in total.

Also, if I "repaired" this sector, would it wipe my entire hard drive clean? I've seen some say that you should backup data near that sector but I honestly have no clue what data is near this sector whatsoever or how to figure any of that out.

 

[AddRAM]

A (hard or physical) bad sector is a damged part of the platter and can`t be fixed, it`s no big deal and windows just can`t write any data there, I wouldn`t worry about it yet.

You can try to fix it, but ususlly you can`t.

Wiping the drive clean will do nothing, you`ll still have bad sectors.

Bad Sectors Explained: Why Hard Drives Get Bad Sectors and What You Can Do About It

https://www.davescomputers.com/hard-drive-bad-sectors/

What Are Physical & Logical Hard Drive Bad Sectors, How To Repair Them

Beginners Guides: Diagnosing Bad Hard Drives - PCSTATS.com

 

[jumanji]

Normally a bad sector will be remapped to a reserved sector. ( Any hard drive will have a certain % of sectors reserved for replacing the bad sectors.)

If you can see a bad sector that would mean that all the reserved sectors have already been exhausted and no more bad sector will be taken in. It would also mean that you can no longer rely on this HDD.As more and more bad sectors are created, your HDD may become inaccessible and shut off.It can happen anytime.

Now the safest course for you is to check your HDD with Windows Check Disk with the "Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors" checked.( If it is your system drive it should be scheduled to run on the next boot, for a boot time run.)



After this if you still see even one bad sector or many bad sectors, forthwith stop using the drive and back up all important data on it. Then run the manufacturer's diagnostic/repair Utility and check its status.

 

[TheLoneWolf527]

Normally a bad sector will be remapped to a reserved sector. ( Any hard drive will have a certain % of sectors reserved for replacing the bad sectors.)

If you can see a bad sector that would mean that all the reserved sectors have already been exhausted and no more bad sector will be taken in. It would also mean that you can no longer rely on this HDD.As more and more bad sectors are created, your HDD may become inaccessible and shut off.It can happen anytime.

Now the safest course for you is to check your HDD with Windows Check Disk with the "Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors" checked.( If it is your system drive it should be scheduled to run on the next boot, for a boot time run.)

View attachment 379183

After this if you still see even one bad sector or many bad sectors, forthwith stop using the drive and back up all important data on it. Then run the manufacturer's diagnostic/repair Utility and check its status.

I ran this earlier except I didn't have the first box of "Automatically fix file system errors" checked off. I figured out the amount of bad sectors I had and downloaded the program I mentioned AFTER doing this check. Should I run this with the fix errors box checked?

 

[AddRAM]

Of course.

 

[CKWD]

Hello TheLoneWolf527!

You have most of the information now.

Usually, when one bad sector occurs, more start to develop. In such cases running the tool suggested by Jumanji and checking out the links provided by AddRAM would only help.

Your system will isolate that (those) bad sector(s) and no data will be written on them. Still, back up your files as soon as possible so that you feel calm about that aspect and you can continue using the drive as long as it has good and stable performance.

The minute you see the performance is degrading, I would suggest replacing it. And till that point, always have regular back ups made.

Best of luck!

CK_WD