What Is a Bad Sector?
To know about bad sectors, you should know what a sector is.
A sector refers to a kind of physical structure of HDDs.
As we all know, in an HDD, data is stored on platters.
A platter is divided into multiple concentric circles, which are called tracks.
The part where the geometric sector and the track overlap is called the sector.
A bad sector is an unreadable one.
Upon taking damage, all information stored in that sector is lost.
Nowadays, a bad sector may also refer to a bad block on SSDs.
What is the difference between logical bad sectors and physical bad sectors?
This is a logical bad sector and it can be repaired.
On the other hand, sectors broken physically cannot be restored.
How does a physical bad sector occur?
First, a new drive may start with some innocuous bad sectors due to manufacturing flaws.
But these bad sectors will be blocked by the manufacturer.
Further Reading:
Why does the logical sector exist?
This involves the development history of hard drives.
Nowadays, most hard disks use the 4K sectors, but earlier, most hard disks used 512-byte sectors.
At that time, file systems had developed greatly, including the familiar FAT32 file system.
These file systems often use clusters smaller than 4KB.
Therefore, to be compatible with these file systems, manufacturers have created a layer of logical sectors.
A physical 4KB sector is usually divided into eight logical 512-byte sectors.
The only way to distinguish them is to give a shot to repair the bad sector.
If a bad sector can be repaired, it is a logical sector.
Otherwise, it is a physical sector.
On Windows PCs, it’s possible for you to use thechkdsk /bcommand to repair bad sectors.
This software has a feature named Surface Test, which can check bad sectors on a disk.
How to use MiniTool Partition Wizard to check the bad sectors on a disk?
Here is the guide.
Right-smack the disk and chooseSurface Test.
Step 2:On the pop-up window, clickStart Now.
If bad sectors are found, they will be marked as red blocks.
Sometimes, the bad sectors may affect the systems operation or cause data loss.
This post talks about logical bad sector vs physical bad sector and tells you how to distinguish them.
Do you know other ways to tell if a bad sector is logical or physical?
Share them with us in the following comment zone.
We will get back to you as soon as possible.
