What are Bad Sectors and Should You Worry About Them?

Unfortunately bad sectors are the enemy of every computer user in the world. A hard bad sector is a sector on a hard drive that cannot be used due to permanent damage to the surface of the disk. This is not always physical damage (although is often the case) it can be caused by the sector locking and becoming unrecoverable. A soft bad sector is a bad sector that may be repairable as these are logical errors. This article concentrates on hard bad sectors. Running the check disk utility which is built into the windows operating system should resolve logical errors. Any data stored on a bad sector when it goes bad is usually lost as the sector becomes unrecoverable but the rest of the drive should function correctly and the data on the drive should be OK. How did I get bad sectors? Bad sectors are to be expected on any hard drive and most drives have bad sectors when the drive is first manufactured. Over the lifespan of a hard drive you will get bad sectors through no fault of the user. These are usually dealt with by the operating system and stored and marked as unusable. Laptop drives also seem to be more susceptible to bad sectors than a desktop computer simple because a laptop is more likely to be moved around increasing the chances of damage as most hard drives have moving parts. The exception to this is solid state drives which have no moving parts. What are the signs of bad sectors? The most obvious sign is a dramatic slowdown in your computer. People often attribute a slowdown in their computer to a virus or a lot of junk on their computer but in my experience bad sectors are just as likely to be the culprit. The operating system tries to read data and re-try’s until it times out and moves on. Multiple bad sectors will bring a computer to a grinding halt. A good way to check this is to look in your event log under system (control panel, administrate tools, event log) If your computer has many bad sectors they may be logged here. Another common sign is the activity of your hard drive. A hard drive with bad sectors does tend to be much more active. Even when the computer is idle you may see the hard drive light flickering away as it tries to organize or bypass the bad sectors. You may also receive boot errors when booting your operating system such as files missing or boot records corrupted. These can sometimes be attributed to problems with bad sectors on your hard drive. If you are receiving error messages and unable to boot you may find our “hard drive failure repair and recover data” article useful. Can I repair bad sectors? You can not repair hardware bad sectors as they are permanent damage on the disc. Having said that you can perform something called remapping which means the system marks the sectors as bad and knows not to use them to stop your system becoming unstable. Windows has built-in tools that can do this for you called chkdsk. There are other free tools out there that may be able to repair bad sectors(soft) and remap hard bad sectors such as HDAT2. There are also the tools that come from your hard drive manufacturer. Avoiding bad sectors in the future Sometimes no matter what you do you will end up with bad sectors on a drive but there are a few things you can do to minimize the risk. Keep your computer dust free. Use compressed air to clean out tough areas to reach. Always shut down your computer correctly. Turning off the computer by the power socket is a sure fire way to damage your hard drive When moving your computer do so very carefully. Keep your computer cool and well ventilated. Using disk defragmentation software to prevent wear and tear. Malware and viruses can also be a cause of bad sectors. Ensure you run good anti malware software like Malwarebytes Anti-Malware and have a good anti-virus program like Kaspersky Internet Security to keep your computer protected. Courtesy : http://bnjho.blogspot.in  &  http://sapost.blogspot.in Visit: http://mrsupport.blogspot.com/ for latest Technology News

Repairing The Unmountable Boot Volume Error Posted: 07 Apr 2013 08:12 PM PDT What does Unmountable Boot Volume mean? An unmountable boot volume error is quite a common error that people see when they start up their computer and it is usually accompanied by the following. - A blue screen with an error code - Rebooting does not fix the problem - Unable to start the computer in any mode (including safe mode) Unfortunately the error is caused by data corruption either on the file system or the corruption is due to a bad hard drive (A more serious problem). A lot of techs and forums will tell you that you have no other option than to format your hard drive. Now while this could be the case it is not always necessary in the case of file corruption and in the case of a bad hard drive it is unlikely to fix the problem anyway. So lets look at the 2 causes and how you can hopefully repair the problem if the cause is due to file corruption. File Corruption This is the less serious of the two if this is what is causing the unmountable boot volume error as the chances are you data is recoverable. Even if you do need to reformat the drive you should be able to recover your data first if you drive is just suffering from file corruption. To try and fix the error that is caused by file corruption you do need a few things. Your operating system disk or reinstallation disk that came with your computer(Windows 7, Vista, XP) Administrator access Windows 7/Vista Boot your computer from your operating system disk. You can normally select the the boot device by pressing F12 or F9 on your keyboard if the DVD drive is not set as the first boot device. After the welcome screen you should see an option to“Repair my computer” at the bottom of the screen. Select that option. You should then be presented with a number of options and one of them should be command prompt. Select it. In the command prompt type the following chkdsk /rfollowed by your drive letter For example if you drive is D type chkdsk /r D: (On the previous screen under choose a recovery tool your drive may be listed if you are unsure) This will perform a check on your disk for bad sectors and attempt to repair them. If the chkdsk fails to run at all it could be an indication that the hard drive has failed more severely. Reboot the computer once check disk has run (this could take anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 hours) If you still get the same error repeat steps 1 -3 and then this time in the command prompt type bootrec /fixboot This rewrites the master boot record on the hard drive to fix any damaged files. Reboot the computer and hopefully the “unmountable boot volume error” you have been getting should be resolved. Windows XP Insert your Windows XP CD and boot from the CD Once the files have finished loading press R to enter the repair console You may be required to login Once into the command prompt type chkdsk /p  and press enter. This will check the disk for errors and may take between 30 minutes and two hours. Once check disk has finished checking the disc type fixboot into the command prompt to replace and repair any damaged files Reboot and hopefully you should have resolved the issue. Hard Drive Failure Unfortunately if you get the unmountable boot volume error and check disk does not work then the chances are that there is a problem with your hard drive. There are a number of methods you can try to “remap” the hard drive but it is usually my recommendation after recovering the data that you replace the Hard Drive as it does tend to be a recurring problem once it has happened once. There are varying degrees to hard drive corruption that can cause the unmountable boot volume error from bad sectors to complete hard drive failure where data is only recoverable via expensive Data Recovery specialists. Courtesy : http://bnjho.blogspot.in   &  http://sapost.blogspot.in