How to Know if You Have a Bad Hard Drive Sector

A sector is an area on the surface of a hard drive or disk that has several areas called platters, which are the areas on the drive or disk that are covered with the magnetic type material where the data is stored. The platters are divided into a set of tracks and each track is separated into smaller areas called sectors. The sectors on a drive are the areas where data is stored. Hard drives have many different sectors, so if one goes bad it does not ruin the entire hard drive, only the data in the sector is affected.

Hard drives have millions of sectors, many of which do go bad just because of everyday use. You may or may not know if you have a bad sector on your computer’s disk drive because the computer will be alerted to the bad sector and know not to store data in that area. It is always possible that the data stored in a sector that was bad is no longer useable, even with recovery methods.

A faulty sector cannot be used if it has permanent damage to it, but a modern computer comes with many spare sectors, so if one goes bad, the computer is naturally programmed to remap to a functioning sector. When this remapping occurs, the user may not even be aware of it because all of the programs are written to the spare sector and the computer continues to function normally.

In the case that more than one sector in your hard disk has gone bad, there may be noticeable changes to the way your computer system functions. If you are having issues with reading certain data on your hard drive or receive a sector error, or a timeout, it may simply mean that the computer is remapping the data. If the problem continues to persist you can attempt to repair your hard disk sectors by taking the following steps:

• Go to Start
• Select My Computer
• Under Hard Disk Drives, highlight the drive you want to scan
• Open File, Menu and click on Properties
• Open Tools
• Click the Check Now button and follow any prompts

If enough of the sectors go bad, or the problems continue to persist even after your repair, it may be time for a new hard drive. The potential for a bad drive sector is just one of the reasons why it is always advisable to have a reliable back up system for all work stored on the hard drive.