In this article you'll learn:
What Is a Bad Sector?
A bad sector is a sector on a computer's disk drive or flash memory that is either inaccessible or unwriteable due to permanent damage, such as physical damage to the disk surface or failed flash memory transistors.
Bad sectors are usually detected by a disk utility software such as CHKDSK or SCANDISK on Microsoft systems, or bad blocks on Unix-like systems. There are two types of bad sectors: A physical bad sector and A logical bad sector.
A physical bad sector is a cluster of storage on the hard drive that’s physically damaged. For example, too much dust settled on the hard disk, or the memory cell has worn out. This type of sector cannot be repaired.
A logical bad sector is a cluster of storage on the hard drive that appears to not be working properly. The operating system may have tried to read data on the hard drive from this sector and found that the error-correcting code (ECC) didn’t match the contents of the sector, which suggests that something is wrong. This bad sector can be repaired by overwriting the drive with zeros.
Can Bad Sectors Be Copied?
No, the bad sectors can't be copied! Bad sectors are not accessible, which means they can't be read and written. Cloning or copying is the process of reading source sectors and writing to target sectors when source sectors are bad and inaccessible, they can't be copied. Although the bad sectors cannot be copied, you can still copy or clone the disk to get undamaged data from other sectors and ignore bad sectors at the same time.
How Do You Ignore Bad Sectors During Copying?
According to the contents mentioned above, the bad sectors can't be cloned or copied. What if you still want to get the data off the disk? What if you still want to copy the hard disk or other storage devices even with bad sectors.
You still have a chance! You can still copy the disk using EaseUS Disk Copy. This reliable and professional disk copy software helps you ignore bad sectors during disk copying.
This software supports to sector-by-sector clone, which means the software is able to clone sector and skip the bad sectors at the same time. That is to say, this tool can help you ignore bad sectors and copy all the left or undamaged data on your hard disks or other storage devices.
Now, follow the details below and copy data without bad sectors.
- Notice
- Do remember to select sector-by-sector copy.
Video Tutorial to Copy Data and Skip Bad Sectors
Follow to see how to copy everything on your old disk to a new disk by skipping the existing bad sectors:
Steps to Copy Data and Skip Bad Sectors
- Notice
- Do remember to select sector-by-sector copy.
Step 1: Download, install and run EaseUS Disk Copy on your PC.
Click "Disk Mode" and select the hard drive that you want to copy or clone. Click "Next" to continue.
Step 2: Select the destination disk.
Note: The destination disk should be at least the same big or even larger than the source disk if you want to copy or clone the source hard disk.
Step 3: Click "OK" to confirm if the program asks to erase data on the destination disk.
Step 4: Check and edit the disk layout.
If your destination disk is an SSD drive, do remember to Check the option if the target is SSD.
Step 5: Click "Proceed" to start the hard drive cloning process.
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