Overview of hard drive bad sectors
A bad sector on a hard drive is a tiny cluster of storage space of the hard drive that appears to be defective. The bad sectors won’t respond to read or write requests, which may affect the use of your computer and even cause data loss.
Bad sectors usually occur because of physical damage to the disk, wear and tear over time, power surges or unexpected shutdowns, and manufacturing defects. There are 2 types of bad sectors on hard drives - hard bad sectors and soft bad sectors.
- Hard bad sectors: Hard bad sectors refer to physical defects on the hard drive that cause the computer to be unable to read or save data (and cannot be repaired). They are caused by manufacturing flaws or wear problems that contribute to the sector’s physical destruction.
- Soft bad sectors: Soft bad sectors are logical defects caused by software issues or power supply problems to your drive. Unforeseen system issues and malware have been known to also cause bad sectors to develop.
When you copy hard drive with bad sectors, the process may stop due to unreadable data, leading to "read error" messages. Another concern is that the bad sectors may get cloned to the new disk during cloning.
To resolve this, you can either attempt to fix the bad sectors first or use software that can skip over the faulty areas during the cloning process. This ensures that cloning can proceed successfully without duplicating the damaged sectors.
Best software to clone hard disk with bad sectors
To clone hard disks with bad sectors, the first thing you need is an efficient tool. Many programs on the internet will not be able to handle or read the bad sectors and they will simply abort the cloning process when they reach bad sectors – but AOMEI Backupper Professional, this specialist hard drive cloning program can copy only used sectors, and skip all the blank and logically bad sectors.
✔ Allows you to clone large disk to smaller disk (or vice versa), as long as the data fits onto the smaller drive. ✔ By default, it uses an intelligent-sector clone, copying only the occupied sectors and skipping over bad ones during the process. ✔ Supports various disk brands. You are able to clone HDD to Crucial SSD, Samsung SSD, PNY SSD, etc.
AOMEI Backupper’s clean user interface makes it easy to use. Even a rookie user can complete complex-level cloning operations at the push of a button. Why not download it right now to solve your cloning problems?
Easiest hard drive clone software for Windows PC.
How to clone HDD with bad sectors in Windows
Before we start, please do the following preparations:
- Connect the new drive you want to use to your PC (either an SSD or a newer HDD).
- If your computer cannot boot due to the bad sectors, please create a bootable USB on a working PC using AOMEI Backupper (go to Tools > Create Bootable Media). AOMEI Backupper will load once the system has booted from the bootable USB you created.
Step 1. Install and launch hard drive cloning software AOMEI Backupper Professional. Next, click on Clone and then select Disk Clone.
Step 2. Select the hard drive with bad sectors as the source disk.
Step 3. Select another drive as the destination disk. It's OK to clone a larger drive to a smaller drive or vice versa.
Step 4. Configure more cloning options and click Start Clone.
Edit Partitions: Adjust partition size or partition style of the destination disk. SSD Alignment: If you copy data from HDD to SSD, use this option to improve the read and write speed of the SSD as well as prolong its service life. Sector By Sector Clone: Do NOT check this option as it will take considerably longer to clone the drive and the bad sectors will also be copied.
Step 5. When the clone is complete, choose one way to boot from the newly cloned drive.
- Way 1: Shut down the computer and replace the broken hard drive that contains the bad sectors with the newly cloned drive, and then boot from it.
- Way 2: If your computer has extra slots, you can also keep the old hard drive, and change boot order in the BIOS (press specified key during startup to enter this menu) to boot from the new drive.
Bonus: 2 Ways to check and fix bad sectors on hard drive
Before cloning a disk with bad sectors, some users may want to try fixing the existing issues first. Here are 2 ways to help you check and fix bad sectors:
Way 1. Use error-checking tool
1. Open This PC, right-click on the system drive, and choose Properties -> Tools. Then click Check under Error checking.
2. If there are no errors on this disk, you might receive the following prompt. Click Scan drive to continue with the scanning.
Way 2. Run chkdsk command
1. Type "cmd" in the Windows Search pane, and run it as administrator to open an elevated Command Prompt window.
2. When prompted, type chkdsk C: /f /r /x (replace "C:" with the drive you want to scan for) and press the Enter key.
3. Type Y and press Enter to schedule the volume to be checked during the next system startup.
4. Restart your computer and the tool will now find any bad sectors and attempt to repair them.
Note: The data may be permanently lost if the bad sectors can’t be recovered. To avoid data loss caused by a failing hard drive, it is wise of you to backup important files regularly.
Verdict
You shouldn’t worry about bad sectors affecting your disk as you can fix them by cloning the drive with AOMEI Backupper or by using the ‘chkdsk’ function built into Windows. AOMEI Backupper has many other specialist features, like system backup, disk backup, and automatic file sync.
If you’re running Windows Server 2003, 2008, 2012, 2016, 2019 or 2022 operating system, please try the best server cloning software – AOMEI Backupper Server.
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