Bad blocks on the hard drive. Programs for checking your hard drive for bad blocks (bad sectors)

The hard drive is one of the most unreliable devices in a computer. Indeed, in addition to complex electronics, it contains continuously operating mechanical parts. Over time, they wear out and various problems begin, the most common of which is the appearance of BAD blocks. This especially applies to older models. hard drives, which can still be used (in particular in enterprises where films, games and other “heavy” content are not stored on computers) and which have already become fairly worn out. Many users are caught off guard and don't know what to do next. That's why this article was written. In it we will look at all the ways to get rid of these problems that are available at home.

A little history

BAD sectors ( from English - bad, worthless) is available on any hard drive. No matter how carefully their disks are made, there are several places on each of them where writing or reading is accompanied by errors. In addition, there are simply glitchy areas of the surface that can develop into defects over time, which is unacceptable for the user. Therefore, after manufacturing at the factory, each drive undergoes thorough testing, during which bad sectors are identified. They are marked as unusable and entered into a special table - defect sheet.

The very first hard drives had a defect sheet in the form of a paper sticker, into which the addresses of unstable areas were written at the factory. These devices, which were a slightly modified copy of a conventional floppy drive, could only operate under their own physical parameters: the number of tracks, sectors and heads indicated in their passport exactly coincided with their actual number. When purchasing such a device, the user read the sticker and entered the addresses of the killed areas into FAT. After this, the operating system stopped noticing these defects, just as it does not notice bad blocks on floppy disks if they were removed by the Scandisk utility. It was probably in those distant times that the term “bad block” appeared: a block was called cluster- the minimum unit of logical disk space. On physical level a cluster consists of several sectors, and if one sector is damaged, the OS declares the entire cluster unusable. No other methods of hiding defects existed at that time. And when ways to hide individual sectors appeared, people did not invent new concepts, and still successfully continue to use the word “block”.

It didn't take long before manufacturers came up with a very interesting thing: if the user still marks bad blocks as unnecessary, they reasoned, then why not mark them right at the factory? But how to do this if there is no file system, and no one knows what it will be? That's when they came up with a clever thing called " translator": a special table began to be written on the pancakes, which indicated which sectors should be hidden from the user and which ones should be left to him. The translator became a kind of intermediate link connecting physical system"disk heads" with a drive interface.

It was assumed that when turned on HDD will first read its internal tables, hiding the addresses of defects marked in them, and only then will allow the BIOS, OS and application programs to access it. And to prevent the user from accidentally overwriting the translator while working, it was placed in a special area of ​​the disk, inaccessible to ordinary programs. Only the controller could access it. This event made a real revolution in hard drive manufacturing, and marked the emergence of a new generation of drives - with a service area.

In order for all screws of the same model, but with a different number of defects, to have the same capacity, spare tracks were left on each of them - a reserve specially provided for leveling the capacity of drives of the same type to the standard declared value. It was placed at the end of the disk, near its center, and it was also inaccessible to the user. When leaving the factory, such hard drives did not have a single visible bad sector. If new defects appeared during operation, the user could perform low-level formatting using a universal utility from the motherboard BIOS and try to hide them. Sometimes, as with floppy disks, this was possible. But if the “evil spirits” were physical, then this did not help: it was impossible to add new defects to the table and rewrite the translator without special programs. Therefore, bad blocks on many old screws (before 1995) had to be hidden in the same, outdated way - through FAT. And only Seagate, Maxtor and Western Digital released utilities to hide defects and replace them from reserve.

Time passed and the screws changed even more. In an effort to increase the recording density, developers began to use various non-standard tricks: they began to apply servo tags, designed to more accurately place the heads on the tracks. The technology of zone-sectional recording (ZBR) appeared, the meaning of which was a different number of sectors on external and internal tracks. The head drive has changed - instead of a stepper motor, a positioner in the form of a moving coil began to be used. And the heads and disks themselves have changed so much that each company has developed its own lower-level format structure, tailored only to their technologies. This made it impossible to use universal utilities low level formatting due to the fact that the translator of such screws has learned to hide the physical format of the drives, converting it to virtual.

The number of cylinders, sectors and heads written on the hard drive case no longer corresponded to their true values, and attempts to format such a screw using old utilities, as a rule, ended unsuccessfully: its controller rejected the standard ATA command 50h, or simply imitated formatting by filling the screw with zeros. This was specifically left in for compatibility with older programs. For the same reason, the Low-Level Format procedure was excluded from the BIOS of modern motherboards. And in order to give such hard drives real low-level formatting, it was necessary to bypass the translator, gaining direct access to the physical tracks and heads. To do this, they began to use a technological utility that runs special microcode written in the ROM of the drive. The command to call this microcode is unique for each model, and refers to technological commands that are not disclosed by the company. Often such formatting could not be done through a standard IDE interface: many HDD models from the 90s - Conner, Teac, etc., as well as all modern Seagates, require connecting a separate connector to the terminal via a COM port.

As for technological utilities, they were never widely distributed and were inaccessible to the average user. For widespread use, “crazy programs” were written that perform pseudo-formatting through the interface: filling the disk with zeros to clear it of information. This can be seen even from the names of these utilities, which can be found on the websites of hard drive manufacturers: wdclear, fjerase, zerofill etc. Naturally, there are no technological commands in these programs, and therefore they can be applied to any hard drive. Such utilities often turn out to be useful in helping to get rid of certain types of BADs, which we will talk about a little later.

Why did manufacturers act so cruelly, depriving us of the opportunity to do correct low-level formatting and hide defects on our own? There is still no consensus on this question, but the official answer from most companies sounds something like this: “this is such a complex and dangerous operation that the average user should not be allowed to do it, otherwise many hard drives will simply be killed. Therefore, low-level formatting can only be done at the factory, or at a company service center."

Let's try to figure out if this is really so. And at the same time, let’s look at what real low-level formatting of modern hard drives is, is it possible to do it yourself, and most importantly, do we need it?

Preparing the hard drive at the factory

Before hiding bad sectors at the plant, it is very important to identify all, even very small defects, as well as unstable areas that can develop into bad blocks over time. After all, if this happens during operation, the user may lose an important file, and the reputation of the company that produced such an “unfinished” drive will be damaged. Therefore, testing hard drives before hiding defects takes a lot of time, at least several hours, and is carried out in technological mode. This is done to eliminate time delays that inevitably arise during the operation of the translator, sending data through the cache and interface logic. Therefore, at the factory, the surface is scanned only according to physical parameters. Usually this is not done by an external program, but by a special module in ROM hard drive, working without the participation of an interface. The end result of such testing is obtaining a defect list - an electronic list of unusable areas of disk space. It is brought into the service area of ​​the propeller and stored there throughout its entire service life.

Modern hard drives have two main defect lists: one is filled in at the factory during the manufacture of the drive and is called P-list (primary), and the second is called G-list (from the word - growing), and is replenished during the operation of the screw, when new defects appear . In addition, some screws also have a list of servo defects (servo marks applied to the plates of hard drives also sometimes have errors), and many modern models also contain a list of temporary (pending) defects. The controller enters into it sectors that are “suspicious” from its point of view, for example those that were not read the first time or with errors.

Having received the defect sheet, they begin to hide the defects. There are several ways to hide them, each of which has its own characteristics. Theoretically, you can simply reassign the addresses of bad sectors to the reserve and take them from there, but this will cause a loss in the performance of the screw, since each time it detects a sector marked as bad, it will be forced to move the heads to the reserve area, which may be located far from the location of the defect. If there are a lot of reassigned sectors, the performance of the drive will drop greatly, since most of the time it will spend uselessly twitching the heads. Moreover, the performance of screws with different numbers of defects will vary greatly, which, of course, is unacceptable in mass production. This method of hiding defects is called " substitution method" or remap (from English rebuilding the sector map).

Due to the numerous disadvantages inherent in remapping, this method is never used in the industrial production of screws, but a different algorithm is used: after all defects are identified, the addresses of all good sectors are rewritten anew, so that their numbers are in order. Bad sectors are simply ignored and are not involved in further work. The reserve area also remains continuous and part of it is attached to the end of the working area - to equalize the volume. This method of hiding bad data is more difficult to implement than a remap, but the result is worth the effort spent on it - no matter how many bad sectors there are, the drive does not slow down. This second main type of hiding defects is called " sector skip method". (There are other algorithms for factory-hidden defects, for example, by eliminating an entire track, or using a spare sector on each track, but they have drawbacks and therefore are practically not used in modern drives).

The process of recalculating addresses while skipping defects is called “internal formatting.” Internal - because the entire process occurs entirely inside the hard drive, at physical addresses and without the participation of an interface. At this time, the screw is controlled by a microprogram built into its ROM, which analyzes the defect sheet and controls formatting. It cannot be interrupted by external commands. Upon completion of formatting, the firmware automatically recalculates the translator (or creates it again), and the screw becomes ready for use. After that, it, without a single bad block, arrives from the factory to the buyer.

New technologies

Now it’s clear why proprietary utilities do not perform any operations related to direct access to the service area. After all, hiding defects by formatting is an almost complete repair cycle, based on external parameters and associated with a clear understanding of each step. And it is enough to do something wrong to ruin the drive. Let's take a simple example: the user decided to do "real" low-level formatting by running a ROM routine in technological mode. The process usually lasts 10-60 minutes, but then a power outage or a banal freeze occurs - and the screw is left without a translator, because. He just doesn’t have time to re-create it. This means that such a device will be unsuitable for further work - neither the OS nor the BIOS will see it.

It’s scary to even imagine how many drives could be killed in this way, out of simple curiosity or by mistake. Especially if these utilities fall into the hands of dummies who run everything on their computers. Of course, the disk does not deteriorate irrevocably, and by starting formatting again you can bring it back to life. But the thinking of most users is structured in such a way that when faced with problems (a corpse not detected in the BIOS instead of a screw), many panic, blaming the manufacturers for everything. And they naturally don’t need unnecessary problems - it’s much more important to make the hard drive fulfill the warranty period. Therefore, several years ago, drives began to be equipped with the ability to independently “repair” faulty areas - do a remap. As was said earlier, remap did not find application in the factory preparation of drives, but it turned out to be a very successful solution for hiding defects in domestic conditions.

The advantages of remap over internal formatting are the absence of transferring the screw to technological mode, speed of implementation and safety for the drive. In addition, in many cases, a remap can be done without deleting the file system and without the associated data destruction. This technology is called automatic defect reassignment(automatic reassignment of defects), and the process itself - reassign. Thus remap And reassign- this is basically the same thing, although the term reassign is usually applied to a single sector, and remap - to the entire disk.

Remap works as follows: if an error occurs when trying to access a sector, the “smart” controller understands that this sector is faulty and “on the fly” marks it as BAD. Its address is immediately entered into the table of defects (G-list). For many screws this happens so quickly that the user does not even notice that the defect has been detected and is hidden. During operation, the drive constantly compares the current sector addresses with the addresses from the table and does not access defective sectors. Instead, it moves the heads to the spare area and reads the sector from there. Unfortunately, due to the time spent on long-range positioning, such sectors will appear as small dips in the reading graph. The same will happen when recording.

If an error occurs during normal operation of the OS, automatic recovery occurs extremely rarely. This is due to the fact that, on most HDDs, reassign is triggered only when recording. And many operating systems check the sector for integrity before writing, and when it detects an error, it refuses to write to it. Therefore, in most cases, to perform a remap, the screw must be “asked for” - a forced low-level rewrite of the sector, bypassing standard OS and BIOS functions. This is done by a program that can access the hard drive directly through the IDE controller ports. If an error occurs during such a write, the controller will automatically replace this sector from the reserve and the BAD will disappear.

The work of most so-called “low-level formatting” utilities from manufacturers is based on this principle. All of them, if desired, can be used for screws from other companies (if such programs refuse to work with other people’s drives, then this is done for marketing reasons). And of course, remap functions are present in many universal and free programs, the features of which we will look at a little later. In the meantime, a little more theory.

The most common myth among users is the assertion that each screw needs its own, “special” program for hiding defects, and also that remap is low-level formatting. Actually this is not true. Remap is just a type of information recording standard means, and in most cases, any remap utilities can be applied to any screws. Remap is not done external programs, A hard controller disk. Only he makes the decision to reassign defective sectors. “Alien” programs also cannot damage the drive, since they do not use technological commands, and in normal mode the screw will never allow you to do anything with it other than standard read-write operations. The only difference between proprietary utilities is the number of write/read/verification attempts for different screws. In order for the controller to “believe” that there is a BAD to be hidden in the sector, one cycle is enough for some hard drives, and several for others.

Again about S.M.A.R.T.

Almost all hard drives released after 1995 have a system for operational monitoring of their condition - S.M.A.R.T. (Self Monitoring And Reporting Technology). This technology allows you to evaluate at any time such important parameters of the drive as the number of hours worked, the number of errors that occurred during the reading/writing process, and much more. The first hard drives equipped with this system (for example, WD AC21200) had a very imperfect SMART of four to six attributes. But soon the SMART-II standard was developed, and since its introduction, most drives have had such a feature as internal diagnostics and self-monitoring. This feature is based on a series of autonomous internal tests that can be launched using standard ATA commands, and is designed for in-depth monitoring of the condition of the drive's mechanics, disk surfaces and many other parameters.

After performing the tests, the drive must update the readings in all SMART attributes in accordance with its current state. Testing time can vary from a few seconds to 54 minutes. You can activate SMART tests, for example, using the MHDD program (console command "smart test"). After running the tests, “strange” phenomena are possible, very similar to those that occur when a defragmenter is running: continuous lighting of the HDD indicator and the sound of intense movement of the heads. This is a normal phenomenon: the hard drive scans the surface to look for defects. You just need to wait a while until the self-test ends and the screw calms down.

Later, the SMART-III specification appeared, which not only has the function of detecting surface defects, but also the ability to restore them on the fly and many other innovations. One of its varieties was the system Data Lifeguard , used in Western Digital drives. Its essence is as follows: if no calls are made to the screw, it begins to independently scan the surface, identifying unstable sectors, and when they are detected, transfers the data to the reserve area. After which he reassigns. Thus, the data is saved even before a real BAD occurs in this place. Unlike SMART monitoring, Data Lifeguard cannot be disabled external teams and works constantly. Therefore, “visible” BAD blocks almost never appear on modern Western Digital hard drives.

To view the SMART status of a hard drive, use programs called SMART monitors. One of them is part of the HddUtil package for DOS and is called smartudm. This program works with any hard drives and controllers. In addition, it comes with detailed documentation describing all attributes. There are SMART monitors for Windows 9x, for example, SiGuardian and SmartVision are very popular, but they may not work on some systems. This is explained by the fact that programs work with the screw directly, through ports, and the bus mastering drivers of some chipsets interfere with this. Owners of Windows XP should pay attention to the SmartWiew monitor www.upsystems.com.ua/ - the application works correctly in this system even on VIA chipsets.

There is some relationship between SMART attributes and surface condition. Let's consider those that are directly related to bad blocks:

• Reallocated sector count and Reallocated event count: Number of sectors remapped. These attributes show the number of sectors reassigned by the remap in the Grown defect list. For new screws they must be zero! If their value is different from zero, this means that the hard drive has already been used, bad problems appeared on it, and a remap was made to it. Be careful when buying used!
• Raw read error rate: number of read errors. For many HDDs they are always above zero, but if the Value value is within the normal range (green zone), there is nothing to fear. These are “soft” errors that are successfully corrected by the drive electronics and do not lead to data corruption. It is dangerous when this parameter decreases sharply in a short period of time, moving into the yellow zone. This indicates serious problems in the drive, the possible appearance of bad things in the near future, and what it’s time to do backup copy important data;
• Current Pending Sector: this attribute reflects the contents of the “temporary” defect list present on all modern drives, i.e. current number of unstable sectors. The screw could not read these sectors the first time. The raw value field of this attribute shows the total number of sectors that the drive currently considers candidates for remap. If in the future any of these sectors is read (or rewritten) successfully, then it is excluded from the list of applicants. A constant value of this attribute above zero indicates problems with the drive.
• Uncorrectable Sector: shows the number of sectors in which errors could not be corrected by the ECC code. If its value is above zero, this means that it’s time for the screw to do a remap: it is possible that while writing data, the OS will run into this sector and, as a result, some important information or the system file will be corrupted. However, for some screws this attribute for some reason is not reset even after a remap, so it is not necessary to trust its readings.

Types of defects and reasons for their occurrence

The time has come to figure out why, in fact, such a nuisance as bad things arises? To do this, consider the structure of the sector, as seen by the propeller electronics “from the inside”:

Rice. 1. Simplified hard disk sector structure

As can be seen from Figure 1, everything is much more complicated than it might seem at first glance, even with the help of a disk editor. A sector consists of an identifier header and a data area. The beginning of the sector is marked with a special byte - an address marker (1). It serves to inform the controller that the sector is under the head. Then follow the cells that contain the unique sector address in CHS format (2) and its checksum - to check the integrity of the recorded address (3). 512 bytes of user data are placed in a separate field (4), to which, when writing, several tens of bytes of redundant information are added, intended to correct read errors using the ECC code (5). Next to the data there are 4 bytes of a cyclic checksum (CRC) of the data, which serves to check the integrity of the user data and notify the error correction system if it is violated (6). For more reliable operation of the sector when the rotation speed fluctuates, there are space bytes (7). Some hard drives have an additional byte after AM - in it the sector is marked as BAD.

The structure of the low-level format varies greatly among different models drives, and is determined by the type of controller used, its firmware and the ingenuity of the developers.

As long as the structure of the format is not broken, the hard drive works properly, clearly fulfilling its duties - storing information. But as soon as evil forces intervene, depending on the type of destruction, they manifest themselves as BAD sectors of varying degrees of severity.

Defects can be divided into two large groups: physical and logical. Let's consider each of their types in detail.

Physical defects

Surface defects. Occur when mechanical damage magnetic coating inside the sector space, for example due to scratches caused by dust, aging plates or careless handling of the hard drive. Such a sector should be marked as unfit and removed from circulation.

Servo errors. All modern drives use a system called a voice coil to move the heads, which, unlike the stepper motor of old screws, does not have any discrete movement. To accurately place the heads on the tracks in the screws, a system with feedback, which are oriented by special magnetic servo marks applied to the disk. Servo marks are located on each side of each disk. They are located evenly along all tracks, and strictly radially, like spokes in a wheel, forming a servo format. It does not belong to the lower-level format and is not shown in the figure, but absolutely all modern hard drives have it, and plays a vital role. Servo marks stabilize the engine rotation speed and keep the head on a given track, regardless of external influences and thermal deformation of the elements.

However, during the operation of the propeller, some servo marks may be destroyed. If there are too many dead servos, failures will begin to occur in this place when accessing the information track: the head, instead of taking the desired position and reading the data, will begin to move from side to side. It will look like a fat and particularly arrogant BAD, or even like a group of them. Their presence is often accompanied by head knocking, freezing of the drive and the inability to fix it with ordinary utilities. Elimination of such defects is possible only with special programs, by disabling defective tracks, and sometimes the entire disk surface. For these purposes, some drives have a servo defect list that stores information about bad servo marks. Unlike the P- and G-sheet, the servo defect sheet is used not by the translator, but by the entire propeller microprogram. Access to sectors with defective servo tags is blocked even by physical parameters, which allows you to avoid knocks and disruptions when accessing them. The hard drive cannot restore the servo format on its own; this is only done at the factory.

Hardware BAD sectors. They arise due to a malfunction of the drive’s mechanics or electronics. Such problems include: broken heads, displacement of disks or a bent shaft as a result of an impact, dust in the containment area, as well as various glitches in the operation of electronics. Errors of this type are usually catastrophic and cannot be corrected by software.

Logical defects

These errors occur not due to damage to the surface, but due to violations of the logic of the sector. They can be divided into correctable and incorrigible. Logical defects have the same external manifestations as physical ones, and they can only be distinguished indirectly, based on the results of various tests.

Correctable logical defects (soft bads): appear if the sector checksum does not match the checksum of the data written to it. For example, due to interference or a power outage during recording, when the screw had already written data to the sector, but did not have time to write the checksum (Fig. 1). The subsequent reading of such an “unfinished” sector will result in a failure: the hard drive will first read the data field, then calculate its checksum and compare what was received with what was written. If they do not match, the drive controller will decide that an error has occurred and will make several attempts to re-read the sector. If this does not help (and it will not help, since the checksum is obviously incorrect), then, using code redundancy, it will try to correct the error, and if this does not work, the screw will generate an error external device. From the operating system side it will look like BAD. Some hard drives had an increased tendency to form soft bads due to errors in the firmware - under certain conditions, checksums were calculated incorrectly; in others it was due to mechanical defects.

The operating system or BIOS cannot correct the logical defect on their own, because before writing to the sector, they check it for integrity, run into an error and refuse to write. At the same time, the propeller controller cannot correct this error either: it tries in vain to read this sector on the second or third attempt, and when this does not work, it tries with all its might to help itself, adjusting the reading channel and the servo system on the fly. At the same time, a heartbreaking grinding sound is heard. This creak is not produced by “heads on the surface,” as many are accustomed to thinking, but only by the positioner coil, due to the specific shape of the current flowing through it, and it is absolutely safe. The address of the unread sector gets into the temporary defect list, changing the value of the Current Pending Sector attribute in SMART, and is stored there. There is no remapping when reading.

And only forced low-level rewriting of this sector special program bypassing the BIOS leads to automatic recalculation and rewriting of the checksum, that is, the BAD block disappears without a trace. You can rewrite it with a disk editor that can work with the screw directly through the ports, but usually they “rewrite” the entire disk, filling its sectors with zeros. Utilities that do this are freely distributed by drive manufacturers, and are often incorrectly called "low-level formatting programs." In fact, these are simple “nullifiers”, which does not in the least prevent them from ridding the screw of bads: if the recording is successful, the soft bads disappear, and if the recording is unsuccessful, the bad is considered physical, and an autorepair occurs.

Uncorrectable logical errors. These are errors in the internal format of the hard drive, leading to the same effect as surface defects. They occur when sector headers are destroyed, for example due to the action of a strong magnetic field on the propeller. But unlike physical defects, they can be corrected using software. And they are called incorrigible only because to correct them it is necessary to do the “correct” low-level formatting, which is difficult for ordinary users due to the lack of specialized utilities. Therefore, in everyday life, such a sector is turned off in the same way as a physical one - using a remap. Currently, an increasing number of screws are produced using ID-less technology (sectors without headers), so this type of error is no longer so relevant.

"Adaptive" bads. Despite the fact that screws are very precise devices, their mass production inevitably results in variations in the parameters of mechanics, radio components, magnetic coatings and heads. This did not interfere with old drives, but with modern drives with their enormous recording density, the slightest deviations in the dimensions of parts or in signal amplitudes can lead to deterioration in the properties of the product, the appearance of errors, even to the complete loss of its functionality. Therefore, all modern drives undergo individual tuning during manufacturing, during which such parameters of electrical signals are selected that the device works better. This setting is carried out by the ROM program during technological scanning of the surface. In this case, so-called adaptives are generated - variables that contain information about the features of a particular HDA. Adaptives are stored on plates in the service area, and sometimes in flash memory on the controller board.

If during the operation of the screw the adapters are destroyed (this can happen as a result of errors in the screw itself, static electricity or due to poor-quality power supply), then the consequences can be unpredictable: from a banal bunch of bad things to the complete inoperability of the device, with a refusal to be ready according to interface. "Adaptive" bads differ from regular topics that they are “floating”: today they exist, but tomorrow they can disappear and appear in a completely different place. It is useless to remap such a screw - ghost defects will appear again and again. And at the same time, the disk surface can be in impeccable condition! Adaptive bads are treated by running selfscan, an internal testing program similar to the one used at the factory when making screws. In this case, new adaptives are created, and the propeller returns to its normal state. This is done in the conditions of branded service centers.

Emerging defects

These are areas of the surface on which a clearly expressed defect has not yet formed, but problems with reading speed are already noticeable. This happens because the sector is not read by the controller the first time, and the screw is forced to make several revolutions of the disk, trying to read it without errors. If you still manage to read the data, the screw will not tell the operating system anything, and the error will remain unnoticed until a real BAD block appears in this place. As a rule, it immediately turns out that it was in this place that very important file, in a single copy, and it can no longer be saved. Therefore, disks need to be tested periodically. This can be done with Scandisk or Norton Disk Doctor in surface testing mode, but better - with a special utility that works independently of the file system and can identify emerging BAD sectors by measuring the reading time of each sector.

Practice

Each company that produces hard drives usually develops special software for diagnosing and servicing its drives, posting it on the Internet for free use. Sometimes these utilities already contain operating system(usually a variation of DOS), such as Sea Tool from Seagate or Drive Fitness Test from IBM (now Hitachi). And sometimes it's just an executable file that you need to run yourself from DOS, like Maxtor (already owned by Seagate) or Fujitsu. This software allows you to test the drive for errors and, if possible, correct them. Among the correction methods, you can often find functions of cleaning the disk (filling it with zeros and destroying all information), as well as hiding defects using the remap method. But we will not consider proprietary utilities - as we learned, these programs do quite standard things: writing zeros and checking the surface. Therefore, let us pay attention to several very good alternative programs.

So, we have this funny little thing called “badass hard”. Or we want to insure ourselves against “surprises” and check it while it’s working. For this purpose, first of all, the MHDD program. Anyone who has ancient hard drives up to 8.4 GB, especially old Western Digital ones, is recommended to have a DOS program on their computer.

First of all, you need to prepare diagnostic software and create a boot disk with MS-DOS. You can donate boot floppy Windows 9x, removing all files from it except io.sys, msdos.sys and command.com. In the free space we write the executable file of the MHDD program: mhdd2743.exe and the configuration file mhdd.cfg. Since there is still a lot of free space on the floppy disk, we write the SMART monitor smartudm.exe and some file manager, for example Volkov Commander, onto it. You will need it to view the contents of program operation reports. For convenience, we place all files in the root directory of the floppy disk. As an option, you can not create a floppy disk at all or use it only to load DOS, and run all programs directly from the main hard drive, connecting the screw being tested to another channel. There is no need to burn programs to a CD in order to run them from there - the disk must be open for writing, since the programs will create work logs on it, and if they fail, they will simply fail. After carefully reading the description of MHDD and SMARTUDM, you can begin the execution. First, let's look at the SMART information of our drive (we will have to do this more than once in the future).

We boot from our floppy disk, and if the screw in question hangs on the primary IDE channel, we type in the command line: a: smartudm, and if on the secondary - a: smartudm 1. If the system has more than two hard drives, then the number may be greater than 1. A table will appear in front of us, characterizing the state of the drive (Fig. 2).

Fig.2. Hard drive SMART status graph for quick assessment of its condition

Each line of the table is one of the parameters of the current state of the screw. Opposite each of them, in the “Indicator” column, there is a scale divided into three colored zones. As the drive wears out, the length of the indicators decreases, as more and more green squares on their right side turn out to be extinguished. What remains are yellow and red. When all the green squares in any indicator disappear, this means that the screw has exhausted its service life or is faulty. It is recommended to save important data, since at any moment the screw may die completely. If only a red square remains, the screw is already in a state of disrepair and is unsuitable for further file storage.

The inscription "T.E.C. not detected" means that the current state of the propeller is in perfect order. If this is not the case, a warning will be issued, highlighted in red. By looking at the color chart, you can quickly assess which SMART attribute caused such dissatisfaction with the program. In the case of a large number of bads, it will probably be the top one (Raw Read Error Rate). But this information is approximate, and we need absolute values ​​of the attributes, so we click and see something like this (Fig. 3):

Fig.3. Extended SMART hard drive status (exact attribute values)

This SMART monitor mode is the main one, and we will use it to monitor the status of the drive during any further actions. For example, by looking at the value of attribute 5 (Reallocated Sector Count), we will see the contents of the user defect list and will be able to judge whether hiding defects was successful. When you press the key, the current SMART log is saved to a file. By pressing the key you can exit the program in DOS. The controller updates some attributes on the fly, several times a minute, so to obtain the most reliable result, the screw needs to be tested, which is what we will do now.

We exit the SMART monitor and launch the MHDD program by entering the name of its executable file on the command line. After booting, you should immediately press the key combination - the program will scan the bus and show a list of drives connected to the system. Select the one you want to check by entering the required number from 1 to 10 into the console (Fig. 4). Then press to initialize the selected screw.

Fig.4. Initializing the screw by command

After these steps, the drive will display information about its capacity, the maximum supported DMA mode, and much more. The MHDD program sees the screws as a whole, without being at all interested in their partitioning and the type of file systems. It will see all IDE screws, regardless of whether they are defined in the BIOS or not. Even if the motherboard does not support large-capacity drives, the program will still see them at full capacity, as long as the hard drives are in good working order. If this happens, you can start checking the surface.

To do this, click and set the parameter in the top line of the menu that appears (by default it is CHS). Switching between CHS and LBA modes is done using the spacebar. Then press it a second time. Gray rectangles will run across the screen. This will take 10-30 minutes, and is absolutely safe for the information stored on the drive, since it only reads sectors. Here's what the author of the program wrote about this mode in its documentation:

"When performing a surface test, a window will appear on the right. The first line of this window will display the current speed of work with the surface. The last line will show two percentage values. The first value shows the percentage of completion of the current test in a given period, and the second displays how far the heads have gone from 0 cylinder and came to the last one. During surface testing, one square is equal to 255 sectors (when testing in LBA mode), or the number of sectors in the HDD parameter line (usually 63 - when testing in CHS mode), the “cloudier” the square is. It took the drive more time to read this block of sectors. If colored squares appear, it means that the drive did not fit into the period of time allotted for it to work. The colored squares indicate the abnormal state of the surface (but still without BADs). The lower the color in the menu, the longer it took the drive to read this hard-to-read area. Red color is a sign that a BAD block has almost formed in this place. A question mark appears when the maximum time to wait for readiness is exceeded. That is, when [?] appears, we can assume that the drive is “stuck” in this place and there is clearly either a serious surface defect or the magnetic head unit (MMG) is faulty. Everything below the question mark is an error (BAD block). If they appear during testing, it means there are physical defects on the surface."

If there are BAD blocks, [x] icons usually appear instead of squares, obviously symbolizing crosses. If the surface is in order and without colored squares, and all SMART attributes are in the green zone, you can breathe easy: the screw is still working.

If the MHDD showed that there are defects on the surface, and the screw “freezes” or makes scraping sounds, then there are problems. But let’s not immediately think about the bad: after all, bads can be logical (soft bads), so first we’ll give the drive a “brain cleanse” - we’ll perform a low-level writing of zeros to all sectors. (Attention! In this case, all information will be destroyed, so we copy important data to another disk). The MHDD program has two commands for zeroing disks: erase And aerase. We will use the first one since it works faster.

We initialize the screw by pressing a key (it is advisable to do this procedure before any actions), and enter the ERASE command into the console. Be very careful when choosing a drive, otherwise you can accidentally ruin your working drive: the data is lost irretrievably, and even the FSB will not be able to restore it! The cleaning procedure is quite slow, taking several tens of minutes. But in the future, having understood the program a little, you will be able to erase the disk selectively by entering the starting and ending sector numbers before starting the procedure. This is very convenient if the bads are located towards the end of the disk, and its beginning is perfect.

After cleaning, run the surface test again (by double-clicking or using the SCAN console command). In this case, the propeller controller must recalculate vital SMART attributes, which will make its SMART status more reliable. If there are no more bads, the propeller can be considered repaired. We exit MHDD, launch our SMART monitor and look at the value of the Reallocated Sector Count attribute. If it did not increase after cleaning, and the defects disappeared, then they were logical. If it increased, they were physical, and the controller performed a successful remap of these sectors. If, on the contrary, the bad problems remain, and the value of the Raw Read Error Rate attribute has dropped catastrophically, everything is much more complicated, and the screw is seriously damaged. We will try to treat him further - do a repair.

You may have already noticed that when you press a key once in MHDD, a menu appears containing Extra options scanning (Fig. 5)

Fig.5. Settings for scanning and remap parameters

Among these parameters there is a remap function. By default it is turned off, but by placing the cursor on it and pressing the spacebar, you can turn it on (Remap: ON). In this mode, MHDD will try to cure the defective sector, showing in every possible way to the controller that there is a BAD there and it needs to be hidden. In this case, a blue square or inscription appears near each successfully hidden sector. After eliminating all the bads, you need to run the surface test again, exit MHDD and start the SMART monitor again, making sure that the Reallocated Sector Count value has increased. This means that the remap was successful, without errors, and the defects were actually replaced from the reserve.

If for some reason you do not want to lose information from a damaged hard drive, for example, there is nowhere to save it, do not despair. You can try not to full reset, and go straight to the remap using MHDD. The information from the screw is not erased, except, perhaps, that which was in the bads themselves (but it still cannot be returned). When bads are found, the program will apply the same measures to them as when resetting them - a low-level record, and therefore, even if the bads turn out to be logical, they can most likely be corrected. The exact result depends on the microcode implementation specific model drive. But if this does not help, and the defects do not disappear, you will still have to reset it, just in case. In some cases, only using the "aerase" command can help (it resets the screw using a different algorithm, but is slower).

The MHDD program is constantly being expanded and improved. Therefore, by visiting its official website you can download its latest version.

It may happen that even after all the operations performed, the bad problems will remain, and SMART will show that the repair is not happening. There may be several reasons:

• The screw is very old and its controller does not support the Automatic Defect Reassignment function. For example, the company’s screws cannot be remapped at all. Can only be treated with special technological utilities;
• the screw may have a full G-list, and there is no longer room for new defects. This is clearly visible in SMART by the blockage of the Reallocated Sector Count attribute. Such a screw can be repaired in a workshop by transferring all the remaps to the P-list and subsequent low-level formatting;
• the automatic defect replacement procedure was disabled in the screw itself. The proprietary utilities of some drives allow you to do this, and they can also be used to enable it again. This is a fairly rare case;
• a special defect that cannot be repaired may appear on the screw. For example, if the sector header in which the sector is marked as BAD is physically destroyed, or the servos are severely damaged. Such a screw can only be repaired in a technological mode, by a good specialist;
• the controller could not believe that the sector was really defective, since it was still able to read/write it, even if not on the first try. In this case, the remap will not occur. No defect hiding program ever writes directly to defect lists. This can only be done by the controller itself, based on its observations. In order for him to “believe” that there is a bad thing in a given place and hide it, sometimes you have to explain it to him for quite a long time, showing him the problem sector in every possible way - write/read it repeatedly until an error occurs. Therefore, remap utilities will never hide an emerging defect. All you need is a "real" BAD for this to happen. This “lack of trust” is deliberate: after all, each moved sector worsens the drive’s parameters, reducing its performance. And it most likely won’t be possible to hide 666 bads with a remap - the size of the user defect list is limited, and at a certain value (from tens to several hundred sectors, depending on the specific model), the screw overwhelms its SMART, informing that it’s time to repair or landfill.

But don’t rush to throw away such a drive. If it is relatively modern and does not have a full defect list (attribute 5 is normal), there is still hope for a remap. You just need to try applying another program to it that has a larger number of write cycles to the defective sector. Such programs include HDD Utility for DOS. It works a little differently than MHDD: it separates the surface check and remap functions, and the remap is performed based on the protocol created during scanning. Therefore, we first start the check by going through the chain: - -, and then go to point - - (Fig. 6). Before doing this, it is advisable to read the description of this program, since it is very detailed and written in Russian. Disadvantages of Hdd Utility - misunderstanding of drives with a capacity greater than 8.4 GB and refusal to work with some models (the latter is due to a limitation free version). But this is not so important - “hard-to-remove” screws usually have a small capacity - usually these are various Western Digital models with a capacity of 0.65-6.4 GB. For large screws, you can use the HddSpeed ​​v.2.4 program, it also has remap functions (Try to repair/reallocate found defects) and a Russian description (Fig. 6).

Fig.6. HDD Utility. The process of hiding bad sectors

Rice. 7: Remap using HddSpeed

It is impossible to assess the real state of the drive from the graph received through its interface. This is explained by the fact that when the interface operates, delays inevitably occur, since the propeller controller, in addition to data transfer, performs many other operations: converting physical addresses into LBA, defect management, recording internal SMART logs, data verification and calculation checksums, caching strategy management, thermal calibration, etc. Therefore, this method is suitable only for an approximate assessment of the screw, identifying gross errors, and is used only in everyday life. The authors of testing programs understand this very well, pointing out the impossibility of using their results as any evidence. Tests under pure DOS are considered the most reliable. In multitasking environments, the situation is worse, since any background process distorts time intervals, which prevents a correct assessment of the drive's state.

Alternative methods for hiding defects

As mentioned above, remap has a drawback that manifests itself in the form of jerks of the heads into the reserve area. In this case, the screw may click during operation, and dips will be visible on the graph. This can make it very difficult, for example, to work with streaming video. This is especially pronounced when remaps are located at the beginning of the disk: in this case, the heads travel the maximum distance, and the delays for their movement are very large. Therefore, in some cases, remap may not be practical, and instead best choice Defects will be hidden using the file system. For example, the usual high-level formatting format.com, Scandisk or Norton Disk Doctor. You just need to decide on this step immediately after checking the surface, without trying to make a repair to the screw. Otherwise, if it is successful, it will be impossible to return the bad items and clear the table of defects. Remap is a one-time procedure, and if the screw controller has transferred the sector addresses to the reserve, it will be impossible to return them back.

Another alternative to remap is trimming the space at the end of the disk using HPA (Host Protected Area) technology, which is available on all modern drives. In this case, the screw will be defined in the BIOS as a smaller volume, and all the troubles, if they are located at the end, will remain “overboard” and become invisible. This method should be applied to drives that have many bads at the end of the disk (unfortunately, this rarely happens). At any moment, the screw can be returned to its full capacity and, accordingly, the bad ones too. This can be done with the MHDD program ( console commands HPA and NHPA). If the screw is old and does not support HPA, then you can create a separate logical partition, not only at the end, but also in any other place on the disk, and arrange it so that a large group of bads ends up in it. This is done by the Fdisk program. This section can be blocked unnecessary files, or you can not format it at all, assigning it the “non-dos” status (then it will become invisible to the system).

But the most The best way to rid the screw of bads, especially if there are a lot of them or they cannot be repaired - bench repair by a qualified specialist. Using special equipment and utilities, you can perform a full repair cycle, similar to the one the screw goes through at the factory: correct low-level formatting, cleaning the screw from remaps, restoring service information, and much more. After such a repair, the propeller will be indistinguishable from a new one, will have a smooth schedule, and most importantly, such a propeller will have a safety margin for several years to come.

Contrary to popular belief, remap and low-level formatting are not universal remedy to solve any problems. If the screw has a serious hardware malfunction, then these actions will not only not cure the patient, but can also cause harm to him, completely killing him. For example, if a screw monotonously knocks its heads when turned on and does not want to be detected in the BIOS, or makes a noise when copying files, there is no need to torture it software, they won't help. This behavior is usually associated with a physical break in the heads, damaged servo tags, or a malfunction of the controller. Such a screw does not need formatting, but repair by a competent specialist.

Features, glitches and prevention

Not all screws deteriorate due to careless handling. Sometimes the cause of their glitches is mistakes made by the developers themselves. Some of them have irreparable consequences, as they can physically damage the magnetic surface. This was the case, for example, in 1996 with Quantum ST hard drives. Due to an error in the microcode, these screws unparked the heads a little earlier than the pancakes were dialed desired speed. As a result, the heads scratched the surface, which led to a huge number of bad blocks and rapid failure of the drive. But this did not happen during normal operation, but only when the screw exited sleep mode, so for many this glitch went unnoticed. And only after rearranging the OS, if they forgot to disable “reduced power consumption”, the screw began to crumble. This disease was so widespread that it was popularly called "grandmother's alarm clock" - because of the characteristic metallic sound that the screw made when the hooves were thrown away. After each “awakening” the screw received a new portion of bads, and attempts to make a remap helped only as long as there was enough space in the defect table. Therefore, in order to save the surviving screws, Quantum released a patch. Unfortunately, it was already too late - almost all the propellers of this series died out earlier than a year.

Old Western Digital hard drives in 1995 had similar problems, but their bad ones appeared at the end of the disk. The following glitch is often encountered: the screw simply ceases to be detected in the BIOS. The reason is an error by the programmer who wrote the firmware, as a result of which the screw itself spoils the service area: due to the overflow of the internal error logs, neighboring areas are overwritten, without which the HDD refuses to work. As a rule, this is preceded by some kind of failure, for example, the appearance of BAD blocks or unsuccessful overclocking by the bus. This is exactly what happened with the IBM DTLA series: the error was hidden in SMART, and if it was turned on, the screw died. Seagate, Fujitsu, and many others had similar problems. Therefore, you need to monitor the release of updates for your hard drive and regularly update them. Unlike BIOS firmware motherboards, this must be done - if the company has released firmware, then this is not without reason: perhaps a serious bug was found, the elimination of which will save you from troubles in the future.

There is still a widespread rumor among many users that some screws die from “wrong” low-level formatting, for example by a program built into Motherboard BIOS plat. So far we have not been able to find sufficient evidence for this, but there was a model of a screw with a hole in the microcode that could lead to a similar effect. This is a Fujitsu TAU series (circa 1996) that incorrectly processes the 50h ATA command: it is the BIOS that performs universal formatting, and this command is included in many programs a la HddSpeed. Therefore, you should not tempt fate by formatting these screws using little-known utilities or from the BIOS.

Many old screws, if formatted incorrectly, acquired an uneven reading graph. You can fix it by performing a disk reset in MHDD.

Another type of program that can only be used from manufacturers is DMA mode switching: changes between UDMA33/66/100 are a change in part of the microcode of the screw, so an attempt to use someone else's utility can lead to damage to the firmware, and therefore to glitches with unpredictable consequences.

That's all. We hope that this material helped you. But remember: any number of BAD blocks on a screw is a reason to claim under warranty. And the inability to remove them without deteriorating the characteristics of the disk is a reason to exchange the device. And if you manage to convince the seller of this, consider that hiding the BAD sectors was 100% successful. Just don’t forget about prevention and you may not need to hide anything.

Over time, bad sectors appear on any HDD that are unreadable. When the number of bad blocks exceeds all permissible limits, the hard drive refuses to work. However, under certain conditions, the hard drive can be cured using special software.

What are bad blocks?

HDD (hard disk) consists of several magnetic disks, above which there is a head that writes and reads information. The surface of the drive is divided into tracks and sectors (the smallest division unit). If information is not read from a certain sector, then it is: bad, faulty, broken or simply a bad block.

Restoring bad sectors is not an easy task, but it can be done. If there are few bad blocks on the HDD, you can cure the disk, while simultaneously extending its service life.

The very presence of bad sectors is a bad sign, so even after repair you cannot use the HDD for a long time - it can fail at any time.

Working with VictoriaHDD

VictoriaHDD is one of the most famous programs for hard drive treatment. It spreads across free license and allows you to fix bad blocks in DOS mode. However, working with it requires some preparation.

Creating a bootable USB flash drive and setting up the BIOS

Download the ISO image of the VictoriaHDD utility and write it to a flash drive using WinSetupFromUSB.

1. Open WinSetupFromUSB and select the connected flash drive.
2. Check "Auto format", select "FAT32".
3. Specify the LinuxISO/otherGrub system and click the button on the right. Through Explorer, show the path to the downloaded file ISO image, click “Go” to start recording.
   
4. After creating the Victoria bootable media, you need to restart your computer and open the BIOS. In the “Main” section there is an item “SATA Mode” - you need to set it to “IDE”, because in the “AHCI Mode” Victoria does not recognize the connected drive. Press F10 to exit the BIOS and save the changes.

After completing all the preparations, restart your computer again. When starting, start pressing F11 so that the boot menu appears. Select bootable USB flash drive Victoria to run the program in DOS mode.

Recovery and follow-up

To restore, do the following::

1. After launch, press “P” (English keyboard) to bring up the “Select Port” menu. If the hard drive is connected via the SATA interface, select the “Ext. PCI ATA/SATA". For hard drives connected via IDE, you need to select the appropriate port.
   
2. A list of channels will appear, each of which has a number. Look at the number for your drive and enter it in the field below.
   
3. Press F9 to open the SMART table. Study two items: “Reallocated sector count” and “Current pending sectors”. The first line indicates the sectors transferred to the reserve zone; in the second - places from which information cannot be read (bad blocks). If there are only a few bad sectors, try restoring them.
4. Press F4 and launch “BB: Erase 256 sect” mode. If during the analysis the program finds a bad block, it will try to fix it. If the sector is not physically damaged, then Victoria will heal it. Information from this place will be erased (therefore it is advisable to transfer everything necessary files in advance to another medium), but there will be fewer bad blocks.
   
5. If the sectors cannot be restored, move them to the backup area. Press F4 again and launch “BB: Classic REMAP” mode. Look at the SMART table after the scan is complete - the number of bad blocks should decrease.
   

After using the Victoria HDD, it is advisable to check the disk:

These measures will help you eliminate problems on the disk, which will ultimately lead to an increase in the operating time of the hard drive.

Using HDD Regenerator

If Victoria seems complicated, try restoring the disk and fixing the so-called bad blocks using the program HDD Regenerator. The peculiarity of this utility is that it has access to the software and hardware of the HDD. HDD Regenerator actually tries to cure bad sectors, while most programs deny access to bad blocks, as a result of which the hard drive capacity is reduced.

To fix this problem, launch Task Manager (Ctrl+Shift+Esc) and close all applications. Go to the Processes tab and end all processes running by the user. Click "Retry" to have the program try to access the disk partitions.

If the warning window appears again, restart your computer and start the system in safe mode. You can ignore the warning by clicking “Cancel” rather than “Retry”, but then HDD Regenerator will work with some restrictions.

A window will open resembling command line. In it you will see 4 options for the program:

1. Checking and restoring bad blocks.
2. Check without recovery, display information about bad blocks.
3. Regeneration of bad sectors at a specific location.
4. Output of statistics.

First select operating mode No. 2. The hard drive will be checked for bad data. The following screen will appear, asking you to specify the interval in which to search for bads. It's better to start testing from the beginning, so leave the value at "0".

After starting the disk scan, a progress bar will appear. It will be a long wait; sometimes the system will freeze - this indicates that the program has detected bad sectors and is now determining the extent of their damage.

Once the HDD surface analysis is complete, a report will appear. Study the items “bad sectors founded” and “bad sectors recovered”. These lines indicate the number of bads found and restored. If the line “bad sectors founded” contains many bad sectors, then it is unlikely that you will be able to fix the bad sectors, but you can try.

Recovering bad blocks in HDD Regenerator

Connect the USB flash drive and run the HDD Regenerator program. Select the “Boot-booting flash drive” mode. Select the connected drive and click OK. All information will be erased from the flash drive. Instead, files will be written that allow you to start DOS mode. Further:

1. Restart your computer.
2. When the system starts, start pressing the F11 key until the drive selection window appears.
3. Select the removable drive that contains the HDD Regenerator files.

The program will run in DOS - this mode is better suited for treating bad sectors. A window will appear that you have already seen when working in Windows. Select checking and restoring bad blocks (operation mode No. 1).
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We launch our program and see the following window:

In the “regeneration” menu, select the “start process under windows” item. To start scanning bad sectors or bad blocks, we first need to “explain” to the program what exactly we want to do.

In the next window we need to select the hard drive to scan. In our case, there is only one, select it and click “start process”.

Let's continue. In the next window we will be asked to specify the disk scanning option. I advise you to immediately select the first option “scan and repair” (scan and restore). Simply enter the number “1” from the keyboard, as shown in the screenshot.

And in the last window before scanning the bad sectors itself, we are “asked” which sector to start scanning from? I advise you to leave the number “0”. This will scan the entire disk.

Press the "Enter" key and start scanning for bad blocks. We will look at the whole process using the example of a disk that contains bad sectors. Pay attention to the screenshot below, on it we see the scanning progress (white stripe) and on it there are three bad sectors found by the program.

Let's look at this screenshot in more detail: at the top right we see the time that has passed since the start of scanning bad blocks and the time remaining until the process is completed. When bad sectors are detected on the disk, the program marks them English letter“B” and immediately tries to “cure”. If she succeeds, then in place of the letter “B” the letter “R” appears, which indicates the successful “restoration” of the bad block. In the lower left corner we see statistics on scanned megabytes, as well as the number of “B” bad sectors found and “cured” “R” ones.

Once the scan is complete, we will see this window:

Here are the three bad sectors found by the program and on the right are the already familiar statistics, which say that all bad blocks found have been eliminated.

Also take into account the fact that if bad sectors are detected, it is highly advisable (immediately or after several days) to restart the scanning procedure. The fact is that (with a serious disk defect) bad blocks can appear again and their number can only increase.

This is exactly what the following inscriptions in the screenshot above “tell” us: “4 new bad sectors appear” and “18 bad sectors appear” are bad areas that have reappeared on the hard drive, detected during repeated scanning. Such a disk can still be used quite successfully for some time as an additional one, and various (not very necessary) information and temporary files can be stored on it. But as a reliable storage medium or system drive, it’s definitely not suitable for us!

Actually, I described the whole simple testing process for you :) We discussed the very logic of what happens “behind the scenes” of the work of any program for restoring bad sectors in the previous article, which is called “”.

In addition to what has been said, I would like to point out one more very useful function HDD Regenerator program. She can record her boot image to a CD.

Why is this necessary? Imagine the situation: you have problems with your hard drive (God forbid! :)) and the operating system simply won’t boot because of this. How do we launch our program so that it scans the bad sectors of the hard drive? In this case, the function of creating a bootable version of the program comes to our aid.

Let's look at this possibility. At the very beginning, after starting the program, in the “regeneration” menu, select the “create bootable CD/DVD” item (create a bootable CD or DVD disk).

In the next window, select our recording device installed in the system.

Click the “OK” button, insert a blank disc into the device and go to the last window immediately before burning the disc. Here we are asked to select the recording speed. Select and press the "Burn CD" button.

After finishing recording, we take our (now boot disk) with the “HDD Regrenerator” program, insert it into the computer on which we want to check for bad sectors. We set it to boot from CD and see a menu in which the program shows us the computer hard drives it has found.

As you can see, we have two of them. Select (for example) the second one (enter the number “2” from the keyboard) and press “enter”. Next we see the following window.

It has several options for scanning the hard drive for bad sectors:

1. Scan but do not fix detected bad blocks
2. Scan and correct such sectors
3. View information about the program itself

Enter the number “2” from the keyboard (select the second option). We see this window.

Here we indicate that we will scan immediately with the restoration of bad sectors. We press the number “1”, then “enter” and then the testing process that is already familiar to us will start.

Also keep in mind the following point: poor quality power supply (failures caused by) or the use of various adapters may be the reason that the recovery program will signal that a large number of bad sectors have been detected.

There have been such cases in my practice. The SATA hard drive was connected via a “molex to sata” adapter:

The diagnostic program found a lot of bad blocks on it, but as soon as we installed the appropriate one (which had Sata power connectors), the problem disappeared. So remember firmly - any adapters are a necessary evil and if you can do without them, get rid of them immediately!

That's all I wanted to tell you today about how to search for and fix bad sectors on a disk. At the end of the article, as agreed, I provide a link to the “” program itself. Download and use.

If the computer suddenly starts to freeze, or when it boots, a check for hard mistakes disk (HDD), or data has stopped being copied normally from the HDD - all this may indicate the presence of bad sectors on the disk that need to be repaired.

Special, logically marked areas, or rings, called tracks, divided into clusters and sectors, are magnetically created around the HDD. Information on the disk is written to sectors of 512 or 4096 bytes, but is actually stored in clusters ranging in size from 1 to 128 sectors.

A broken (damaged, faulty, bad) sector on a HDD is a place that has lost its potential for writing or reading, and the operating system (OS) cannot find data in it or write information to it.

Bad sectors arise either due to physical damage to the disk surface or due to software errors and are corrected using system utilities, in particular “Chkdsk”.

These utilities recover logical sectors by matching them to an index in the MFT (master file table) file, and mark physical sectors so that they are not used by the system.

Before using the chkdsk utility, you must close all running programs, because The utility will not be able to recover damaged sectors when they are used by the system.

Step 1. To do this, you need to press “Win” on the keyboard, and hold it, “R” (Win is located between Ctrl and Alt on the left), and in the “Run” window that starts, type “taskmgr” and click “OK”.

Step 2. In the “Windows Task Manager” that opens, go to the “Applications” tab and close all applications running in the operating system one by one, selecting them with the mouse button and clicking “End task”.

Step 4. In the window that appears, click on the “Service” tab and in the “Error-Checking” segment, click the “Check Now” button.

Step 5. The Check Disk dialog box will appear on the screen. If you need to check and fix only bad sectors, disable the “Automatically fix file system errors” checkbox (top item).

Step 6. Click the “Start” button to begin the process of checking and fixing bad sectors.

Step 7 If the HDD being checked is boot disk for the OS, “Chkdsk” will offer to perform the selected procedures the next time it starts. Click “Yes” as the answer.

The next time the system boots, a blue window with a countdown (timer) will appear. There is no need to press any buttons during this time. As soon as the countdown reaches zero, the disk check will begin. After it is completed, the computer will reboot on its own.

When "chkdsk" completes the task of repairing bad sectors of the hard drive, it will generate a report about it. A code of "0" means that no errors were found during the disk scan, and a code of "1" means that errors were found and corrected.

Important! If the disk check process fails, there is a problem with the disk and it is important to back up your data to protect your data. In Windows XP and Windows 7, there is a utility built into the operating system called NTBackup for these purposes.

Fixing bad sectors in Windows 8 and Windows 10

Step 1. Open Windows Explorer combination Win + E, right-click on the icon of the required HDD, and click “Properties”.

Step 2. Go to the “Tools” tab and click “Verify” (you may need to enter administrator account information at this step).

Step 3. The error checking scanner will tell you whether the hard drive has bad sectors or not. If no errors are found, the application will still allow you to run a search for errors on the disk. Click “Scan drive”.

Step 4. You will be able to use the disk during the test. If errors are found, they can be corrected. At the end of the disk scan, the system will issue a report on the results. Click "Close".

Reference! Despite the fact that Windows 8 and 10 allow you to use OS applications while the utility is running, this is not recommended to avoid interrupting the scanning process.

If the HDD has physical wear on its sections, there are “unstable” sectors, etc., the OS may “freeze” when the above-mentioned utilities are running. Forcibly interrupting their work can damage OS system files.

Important! Damage system files The OS requires loading the last known good OS configuration (using the F8 button) or restoring Windows from the installation disk.

Despite the fact that physical bad sectors are not, except for marking with chkdsk, it is possible to reassign them (in English remap) or cut them off.

Determining the location and volume of bad sectors using the Victoria program.

Step 1. Install and run Victoria program under account administrator. Select the Standard tab in the window. If there are several HDDs in the system, select the required one with the mouse on the right side of the window.

Step 2. To determine the location of bad sectors on the HDD, go to the “Tests” tab and click “Start”.

The example shows that from block No.771093375 there are:

• “candidates” with a read delay of 600 ms, there are 190 of them in the example;
• There are 8 bad sectors (Err) in the example. Just below the counter shows the figure 376507 MB (376 GB).

You can also see that from the 376 GB point you can cut off the entire HDD space to its end, cutting off the bad sectors grouped here in one place.

Reference! In the presented example, the start of hard disk scanning (Start LBA) is set manually from block No.750000000. When conducting a test scan of “your” HDD, this value does not need to be set.

The HDD shown in the example has an exact capacity of 465 GB, and the calculation of the cut volume will look like this: 465-376=89 GB. In this case, it is better to cut off the disk volume with a margin - for example, 100 GB, for the possible appearance of additional bad sectors in this area.

Trimming HDD using AOMEI Partition Assistant

To increase the speed of cutting bad sectors on the HDD to “acceptable”, it is desirable that it does not contain partitions at this time. Important data from the disk must be copied, if possible, before starting the procedure.

Step 1. Install and run the program. In the main window, select the desired HDD and click “Delete partition”.

Step 2. Select the “Quickly delete partition” option and click “OK”.

Step 3. Click "Apply".

Step 4. In the next window, click “Go” (you may need to restart the OS). The partition removal process will begin.

Step 5. An unallocated area (Unallocated) will appear in place of the disk. Select it and click “Create partition”.

Step 6. In the window that appears, click the “Advanced” button.

Step 7 In "How to create" select "Primary partition". When creating a disk, move the slider with the mouse by a certain amount, leaving an undistributed area where the bad sectors will be located.

Click OK.

Reference! The program has right and left sliders (delimiters). The delimiter that is required in the specific case of trimming the hard drive is used. In the example presented, the right slider is shifted to the left by 100 GB.

Step 8 Click "Apply".

Step 9 Click "Go".

Step 10 Click "Yes".

The process of creating a partition on the HDD will begin.

As a result, a partition will be created on the HDD, at the end of which there is unallocated space (Unallocated Area) with bad sectors.

Using the Remap function in Victoria

If the bad sectors marked in the program are not grouped nearby, but are distributed throughout the HDD, the remap function present in Victoria can help.

The remap function repeatedly writes to the problem sector, and if these attempts are unsuccessful, the sector is replaced by assigning its address to a healthy sector taken from a special place on the HDD.

Reference! In this technical scenario, you need to create a bootable USB drive (flash drive) containing the Victoria program, and after booting from the USB drive via DOS, you will get rid of bad sectors on the HDD.

In the video below you can see how these steps can be implemented in practice.

Video - Trimming a hard drive from bad sectors REMAP, Treating BAD sectors of HDD

Checking the HDD for bad sectors

After treating bad sectors, you can find out whether there are still . To do this, you need to manually run the “Chkdsk” check.

Press “Win+R” on the keyboard, and in the “Run” window that opens, type: chkdskH:/F/R, and “OK”.

Reference! Instead of “H” you need to type the letter of the hard drive partition being checked. The /F flag starts fixing file system errors, and the /R flag starts searching for bad sectors.

If no bad sectors are detected, at the end of the work “chkdsk” will display in a special window information about 0 KB located in bad sectors.

Physical damage to the HDD is often caused by defects in its manufacturing, overheating, scratches due to impacts, dust, etc. Software (logical) bad sectors are caused by a conflict software, viruses, sudden termination of a program or OS, including due to power problems.

Eliminating situations that could cause damage to HDD sectors will allow you to maintain the integrity of important data and avoid purchasing a new HDD if its physical resource is exhausted.

Video - How to remove bad sectors on a hard drive

We will tell you one simple and second more advanced way to check the health of your hard drive and fix bad sectors using HDD programs Scan and HDD Regenerator programs.

The hard drive has its own resource, so it is advisable to check its condition once a year.

How to check your hard drive for errors

Previously, we wrote how to check a hard drive for bad sectors using the program. If the program shows problems with the hard drive, we will try to fix them.

What are bad blocks

In a nutshell, bad blocks ( bad block) are damaged sectors on the hard drive into which information cannot be written or read. They appear over time during the operation of the hard drive or when the hard drive is hit while it is running.

How to remove bad blocks from a hard drive

First way, for advanced users who recover bad sectors using the HDD Regenerator program, read

Second way, for Dummies. We recommend replacing it if bad sectors appear on your hard drive. If this is not possible, we will try to slightly extend the life of your disk.

For this we need the HDDScan program. You can download it

During the scan, HDDScan will refer to bad sectors of the disk and the disk itself will mark them so that Windows system will no longer write your data there. This method doesn't offer much of a guarantee, but it is easy to use.

After downloading and unpacking, go to the folder with the program and launch it by clicking on the HDDScan file.

We see a window in which we must select the drive to be checked in Select Drive. Then click on the round button and select Surface Test from the drop-down menu( surface test).

In the window that appears, select Verify and click the Add Test button. The hard drive test has started.

In order to see the progress of the test and the result, double-click on your hard drive in the Test Manager window and select the Map tab in the window that appears.

The window shows the process hard checks disk where we are interested in the Bads parameter. If after the entire check the number of Bads is not very large, 2-5 bad sectors, then your hard drive will still work for some time.

If the quantity is measured in hundreds or thousands, the disk is severely damaged and may fail at any minute.

If there are bad sectors, you need to check the disk once a week and see if the number of Bads is increasing.