Question How can I help an HDD with a full bad sector?

TheuTrich

Prominent
Oct 16, 2021
16
0
510
I accidentally touch the data cable on data transfer, and the computer froze. When restarting the computer I see in the Disk Manager say my HDD is in RAW format. I format it but I say Windows is unable to complete the format, I think after that my HDD is very unstable and randomly disconnects from my pc(I replaced my cable but can't fix it). I search on google "how to fix bad sector on HDD", and some sites recommend using Disk Genius. At first, It appear a bit bad sector but after scanning and fixing it fills the screen with a bad sector. But the HDD is surprisingly quiet I can hear it spinning and some click when I get very close to it. I now make the software up and running full day to scan and fix the bad sector. my HDD is WD brand, it model is "wd1600bevt"
 

Karadjgne

Titan
Ambassador
A HDD is exactly like a vinyl record, imagine 5 or 6 of them stacked on a turntable with needle arms on each. Accessing data is like playing a song, or writing a song onto the vinyl. Normally the sound will be crisp and clear, but over time those groves get worn, and eventually the needle skips and creates big scratches. That's a bad sector. There's no fixing it, it's done. All you can do is quarantine that sector and avoid it, avoid the scratch.

But where there's one scratch, more are soon to follow, the rest of the vinyl is just as worn out.

Time to buy a new HDD, save what data you can, and start over.
 
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No fixing a bad sector, I have a few 1TB HDD's that have bad sectors and they still work, I use them for non important stuff like test purposes, but you can't trust them, and being a 160GB drive its not really worth much, can buy a 500Gb for cheap new now a days.
 
At first, It appear a bit bad sector but after scanning and fixing it fills the screen with a bad sector. But the HDD is surprisingly quiet I can hear it spinning and some click when I get very close to it.
Yeah, touching the data cable has nothing to do with that, unless you got that unlucky that you managed to short circuit something that fried the controller.
It could be that the controller just can't communicate with the data on the drive and you would need a new controller board, it could also be that the cables don't connect correctly or the port on your mobo is bad, you should test the last two first in the best case on a different PC to rule out, or in, the first possibility.