How to remove bad sectors from hard disks

A computer is an essential device now. Neither you nor your kids can get through a day without it. A common problem that can jam up your computer is the development of bad sectors. A bad sector is a portion of your hard drive that has become corrupted, no longer allowing data to be read or written in it. Bad sectors multiply when unattended for long, and that is when your device will start giving you trouble.   

What are the symptoms of bad sectors?  
The presence of bad sectors in a drive will create issues like these:   

• Files would become corrupt for no reason 
• Your system becomes very slow and keeps hanging or freezing 
• The light of an external hard drive will indicate it is working, even when you are not accessing it 

These are very common signs, and today we will suggest home remedies. Whether it’s your machine or your kid’s, don’t wait till the drive crashes with all the data.

How to rectify bad sectors on MS Windows  
Follow these steps on your Windows system: 
Double Click My Computer, and right-click on the affected disk 
On the shortcut menu, click Properties, then click on Tools in the Properties dialog box 
Click Check Now in the Error-Checking Status field 
In the Check Disk dialog box that pops up, select Automatically Fix File System Errors check box, select Scan For And Attempt Recovery Of Bad Sectors, and then click Start 

Once this is done, you will get a window with all the details of bad sectors.  

How to rectify bad sectors on an external HDD  
In case of an external hard drive, connect it to your computer and run an antivirus scan using a reliable antivirus or malware scanner. Virus and malware can cause bad sectors. So, an antivirus scan may repair it. 

How to repair bad sectors using System File Checker (SFC) 
SFC is a Windows bad sector checking utility. This is how you can run it:  

• Open the Command Prompt window and type: sfc /scannow 
• For external drives, type: sfc /SCANNOW /OFFBOOTDIR=c:\ /OFFWINDIR=c:\windows 
• Replace the letter c with the correct hard drive letter  
• Wait for the scan to finish, and then restart the system 

Note: It is advisable to back up your data before doing any of the above.