Link to home
Start Free TrialLog in
Avatar of pkmadhu
pkmadhu

asked on

bad sector removal

how to remove bad sectors from hard disks and floppy disks  without losing data?
Avatar of kahlean
kahlean

now if you have bad sector (assuming that it is a physical damage) there is no way to remove it without perfroming low level format or zero fill. THat means that you have to backup the dat to another driver or disk before doing the low level format. Sometimes by using scandisk, this program might be able to recover files that is located at this particular bad sector on your hard drive and mark it as bad, and move the files to another secotr of your hard drive. So the bottom line no way to remove bad secotr and at the same time without loosing data unless you backup to another hdd.
Not an easy thing to do.

You might have some luck on the hard drive using Spinrite, a commercial program from Steve Gibson, http://grc.com

http://grc.com/srrecovery.htm

No guarantees, as discussed above, but sometimes Scandisk marks sectors bad that are still readable with another program as Spinrite.

You might also want to look at Lost and Found, after running a program like Spinrite, to see if any files could be recovered related to the questionable sectors.
Run SCANDISK (assuming this is a Windows system) and it will find the bad sectors and map them OUT so that they will no longer be used.  If current data on the disk is involved, you will have lost data.  There is no way to recover short of spending money on it.  A possible way to get it is with SpinRite (as mentioned above) but it can only do so much.  If it's important, data recovery services like OnTrack can usually get just about anything but it's NOT CHEAP!!
I think when you run SCANDISK, you only can mark the bad sectors on your hard drive. it has some tools on the Internet to cut and format zero sector to anywhere which you want. I think it is better than low level format. And the best way, you should buy another hard drive.

Have funs,
Hello everyone,

This question has been open for quite awhile. I am going to allow feedback from the questioner and experts. If it is not resolved, I will delete or accept an answer based on the info I have been given. Experts, feel free to offer input. I will monitor this question for a period of 5-7 days and come back and evaluate.  

I reserve the right to disallow any comments that may not have a direct conclusion

Thank you,
ComTech
Community Support Moderator

*Question Author, please return and resolve this question.
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
Avatar of ComTech
ComTech

Link to home
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
Start Free Trial