If your hard drive is experiencing one or more bad sectors, it’s important to address the issue promptly to prevent further data loss. In Windows 7, you can use built-in tools and third-party software to repair soft or logical bad sectors and, in some cases, even hard or physical bad sectors. Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to remove bad sectors from your hard drive in Windows 7:
Repairing Soft/Logical Bad Sectors in Windows
If there are only a few bad sectors on your drive, you can run the CHKDSK command and format the drive to repair those bad sectors:
Run CHKDSK Command
1. Press the Windows key and type **cmd**.
2. Right-click “Command Prompt” and choose “Run as administrator”.
3. Type **chkdsk E: /f /r /x** and hit Enter. (Replace E with the drive letter of your hard drive.)
Format Hard Drive
1. Open Windows File Explorer, locate, and right-click on your hard drive.
2. Select “Format”, reset the file system as NTFS, tick “Quick Format” and click “Start”.
After this, you can save your data back to your hard drive and use it again.
Use a Free Disk Check and Repair Tool
EaseUS Partition Management software offers a simple method to check and fix hard drive errors. You can apply its Check File System option to check and repair hard disk partition errors in Windows 7. Just download and start EaseUS partition management software, locate the hard disk, then run the check file system.
Hard/Physical Bad Sectors Repair
If your hard drive contains hard bad sectors, you cannot repair them using normal solutions. The only possible way is to low-level format the drive, resetting the hard drive blocks, clusters, and sectors.
To resolve this issue, you have two choices:
- Send your hard drive to the manufacturer or a local repair center for a low-level format.
- Clone the disk with bad sectors to a good hard drive to avoid the hard disk getting worse with more bad sectors.