how can I isolate the bad sectors from a HDD?

Answer 1

scndisk back up your crap buy a new hard drive before that one takes a crap

Answer 2

Just do a surface scan using the scan disk function. The window will automatically label any bad sector so that no data will be copy into it. This bad sector region will be isolated by the OS.

However, bad sector in your hard disk is an early sign or your hard disk death. Its time to change your hard disk or at least if you wanna wait, back-up your essential data. The bad sector will eventually spread and more data will be corrupted. You will never know when your HD will breathe its last breath so better be prepared.

Answer 3

Run Scandisk and do a surface scan. This will identify the bad sectors and mark them.

However, this is really only a temporary solution. 99% of the time, your hard drive will continue to develop more bad sectors, since you are not able to fix what caused them in the first place.

Fix it, back up, and consider a new drive.

Answer 4

Detecting and repairing disk errorsYou can use the Error-checking tool to check for file system errors and bad sectors on your hard disk.

Open My Computer, and then select the local disk you want to check.
On the File menu, click Properties.
On the Tools tab, under Error-checking, click Check Now.
Under Check disk options, select the Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors check box.
Notes

To open My Computer, click Start, and then click My Computer.
All files must be closed for this process to run. If the volume is currently in use, a message box will appear prompting you to indicate whether or not you want to reschedule the disk checking for the next time you restart your system. Then, the next time you restart your system, disk checking will run. Your volume will not be available to perform other tasks while this process is running.
If your volume is formatted as NTFS, Windows automatically logs all file transactions, replaces bad clusters, and stores copies of key information for all files on the NTFS volume.
For more information, click Related Topics.

Answer 5

If they are marked bad sectors - your computer will ignore them. Just run defragment or optimisation or whatever it's called on yoour system and it'll take care of that. bad sectors are not a real problem these days. Used to be with earlier operating systems.

Answer 6

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