If my hard dirves show up bad sector in chkdsk result, How can I know if it is logical or physical bad sector?

Question

Anybody knows, please answer my question ASAP, thank you all in advance.

Additional question: If it is logical bad sector, then how can I fix it?

Few days ago, I discovered that few of my files are turned into zero-bytes. Is it because of the hard drive having bad sector?

Answer 1

Hard drives can have bad sectors for years and not cause issues. But if check disk is showing problems, then it is more than likely bad physical sectors. The good thing is that with check disk finding the bad ones, they should be marked and no data should be written to them, which is WHY a hard drive can have bad ones for years and not be an issue. If you low level format the hard drive, they may or may not come back immediatley, they will eventally come back.

You can do one of two things,
1. Run out and buy a hard drive NOW, and reload everything on the new drive, and move your data over to this new drive.

2. You can back up your critical data NOW, before it gets worse. And run check disk maybe every other day for a week or so, see if the bad sectors increase. If they do, then you know the hard drive is going bad. And then shop around for another drive.

More than likley, they wont increase and you will have some more use out of the drive. Unless you have filled the drive to capacity, I would not worry about it, as long as you back your data up on a regular basis. And just replace the drive when it dies, and not worry about it till that time.

Also how old is the computer? Most computer vendors will honor the warranty on the drive for a year or two

Also, if you got the drive from a store and put it in, it COULD have a 2-5 year warranty on it from the manufacturer. If so, they will more than likely get a new drive to you when you send that one to them. If this is the case, call them, and get the ball rolling and get an RMA from them to send it to them.

Most vendors also have drive tools on thier web sites that you will need to download and use first, to verify that the drive is going bad as well. They could also tell you the amount of bad sectors that are showing on your computer is withinn an allowable limit. I dont know that they will, but this is possible, so expect them to want to do nothing.

But whatever you do. BACK the data up NOW, before you loose it, that is the best thing you can do immediatley regardless of whatelse you do with the hard drive.

Answer 2

Its almost Always a logical sector..but that really does not matter.
It means no data can be witten or read on that sector, not that bad unless it is located in the boot sector area, then it can cause serious issues. If you have a disk repair util ie; norton utilities use that to try and repair the sector. if unrepairable it will mark the sector as bad and will not try to access it again. You can use scandisk or checkdisk if you don't have norton's.

Answer 3

Bad sector are ALWAYS psihical . So this mean its time to seriously consider to buy a new hard drive . Its like a cancer in the finnal phase . Pacient cant live much more .
If you wanna know more.....
Feel free to contact me on yahoo messenger for more details.

Answer 4

Re-format you hard drive and then you'll know.