How to Recover Data from Hard Drive with Bad Sectors

"My Windows 10 computer got stuck in a boot repair loop. After some investigation, I found bad sectors, especially issues with system 32 to be the problem. I'd love to get the data off my old drive. How can I recover data from my hard drive with bad sectors?"

What Does a Bad Sector Mean in Windows 10/8/7

Bad sectors often occur when the disk surface gets physical damage, or the transistors failed. Usually, bad sectors on the hard drive or external storage devices are either inaccessible or unwriteable. With more bad sectors accumulate on the hard drive, the more data you'll lose on it. And the hard drive may even not be able to work or function normally again.

Considering this feature of the bad sector, we highly recommend you to get and restore data from the hard drive to a new storage device before the growing bad sectors take over your drive.

Tip 1. Clone and Copy Hard Drive Data to New Drive Skipping Bad Sectors

When your hard drive is failing to function properly with bad sectors, the most straightforward way to resolve this issue is not to repair the existing bad sectors but to clone hard drive data skipping bad sectors to a new secure drive. Here we’d like to recommend you try a 100% working disk cloning software - EaseUS Disk Copy that fully supports all Windows system disk cloning or hard drive upgrading with simple clicks.

You can apply it to clone the hard drive data without bad sectors to a new disk. To guarantee a higher success rate, we'd like to recommend you create a bootable disk in advance. You can follow the tutorial steps below to start the process now:

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.

If the hard drive is not working properly and can’t even boot, please refer to clone failing hard drive to new HDD/SSD for a guide.

Tip 2. Recover Data from a Hard Drive with Bad Sectors

The other way that can help you get data off the hard drive with a bad sector is to restore existing and lost data from it to a secure disk or external storage device.

Professional hard drive data recovery software - EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard can find all existing and lost data from your hard drive with bad sectors. Besides, this data recovery software can:

• Recover lost or deleted files, documents, photos, audio, music, emails easily.
• Recover files from SD card, emptied recycle bin, memory card, and flash drive.
• Support data recovery for sudden deletion, formatting, hard drive corruption, and virus attack.

If the hard drive with bad sectors is still working on your PC, follow the steps below to restore and get data off the hard drive with bad sectors:

Step 1. Select the drive where you lose your data and click "Scan".

Step 2. Use "Filter" or "Search" to find the lost files when the scan completes.

Step 3. Select all the files you want and click "Recover". Then, browse another secure location to save them.

If your hard drive is completely dead, please refer to recover data from a dead external hard drive as a guide. The operation steps are the same as your hard drive. 

Extra Tip: How to Repair Bad Sectors on Your Hard Drive

After you have cloned the hard drive and recover data from it, you can repair your hard drive with these steps below:

Download EaseUS CleanGenius and install it on your computer. Let's start checking and refixing file system error on your device now.

Step 1. Click "File Showing" to enter the next step.

Step 2. Choose the target device and tick the box of "Check and fix file system error". Click "Execute" to start fixing the problematic device.

Step 3. When the fixing process completes, click "here" to open and use your device. 

Conclusion

Bad sectors on your hard drive can lead to complete inaccessibility of the drives and data loss. If your hard disk has some bad sectors, try the solutions in this post. EaseUS Disk Copy makes it easy to solve hard disk errors.