Solved Corrupt Sectors on HDD

I've had an issue with Macrium Reflect unable to read corrupt sectors on my Windows boot drive.

Thankfully, I've been able to circumvent the problem by doing doing a Repair Install of Windows 11 with an In-place Upgrade which moved the corrupt sectors to the free space on the boot partition.

My question is will Windows ignore these sectors when running normally?

Have you run check disk command on the hard drive?

Open the Command Prompt and execute
Chkdsk C: /r
command to schedule a check disk on next reboot of your computer.

FreeBooter said:

Have you run check disk command on the hard drive?

Click to expand...

Yes, several times.

I've also run the following commands - one at a time - at the elevated command prompt

rundll32.exe pnpclean.dll,RunDLL_PnpClean /drivers/maxclean
dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /CheckHealth
dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /ScanHealth
sfc /scannow
dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth

- no errors reported & /RestoreHealth did not clear the issue

Run Seagate SeaTools

SeaTools Bootable provides a basic suite of diagnostic utilities in an environment independent of your installed operating system. This will allow you to test, diagnose, and possibly repair your hard drive, even if your operating system environment is inaccessible.

Please download and use the SeaTools Bootable to create a bootable USB that you can use to diagnose hard drives and monitor SSDs.

The flash drive must be at least 256 MBs but no larger than 32 GBs.

Use SeaBoot_11-18-2019_RC5.usbBootMaker.exe to create bootable USB.


1. Insert the SeaTools USB device and reboot or power on your computer.

2. After SeaTools loads, the Drive List will show different storage devices in your system. Select the drives you would like to test.

3. The menus provide an array of diagnostic tests. Select the test you would like to perform on the selected drives. Please click on Long Generic Test. Long Generic Test scans the entire drive for defects. It will take a long time to complete. Because this test reads every sector on the drive, the amount of time required will depend on the speed and capacity of the disk drive. The highest capacity drives often take 3 to 5 hours per terabyte to complete. At any time, feel free to Cancel the test without harming the drive. Long Test is completely data safe.

4. The test will indicate either Pass or Fail. Upon completion of running the diagnostics, the test results will be given. A log for each device is automatically saved if you have booted from a USB device. Test results are automatically saved in a log file with a file name based on the drive serial number. Post the results of the scan in your topic.

To fix disk errors but also mark bad sectors to not use them again, run chkdsk like this:

chkdsk c: /f /b /r

IanMosley said:

I've had an issue with Macrium Reflect unable to read corrupt sectors on my Windows boot drive.

Thankfully, I've been able to circumvent the problem ... My question is will Windows ignore these sectors when running normally?

Click to expand...

I see from your specs that all your drives are HDDs. If you read the SMART data from the problem drive you will probably see a non-zero raw value for the Pending Sector Count and possibly the Reallocated Sector Count too. For a healthy disk both of these should be zero.

An HDD's internal controller has a pool of spare sectors it can use to replace (reallocate) any weak ones. But it can only do a reallocation while the bad sector is not in use. I would back up the entire drive concerned, delete all its partitions, then create one partition from the whole drive. Perform a Full format on this (not a quick one) and all sectors will be tested, with any poor sectors being reallocated.

You can then restore the backup to what will now be an error free drive. How much longer it will stay that way is another question. Keep an eye on the SMART data and if the Pending Sector Count starts to increase again then it's time to look at replacing the drive.

Sounds like a lot of trouble compared to running chkdsk with the rest parameters.

If it was my computer, I would run the chkdsk command as a temporary fix until I could replace the drive.

spapakons said:

Sounds like a lot of trouble compared to running chkdsk with the rest parameters.

Click to expand...

Chkdsk will find bad sectors and mark then as unavailable for use in the MFT. It cannot repair them. Should you restore an image to this HDD later it could end up using those bad sectors, as it will have wiped the original partition and will have no record of its MFT.

A low level format of an HDD with weak sectors will allow the drive's internal controller to test each sector. It will replace any bad ones it finds with good sectors from a pool of spares it keeps for this purpose. This will restore the condition of the HDD to full capacity with no bad sectors. There is a limit to how long this can be repeated though, the pool of spares will eventually be used up. Any steady increase in Reallocated Sectors, or Pending Sector Count (suspect sectors awaiting testing) is a sure sign it's time to look for a replacement.

spapakons said:

To fix disk errors but also mark bad sectors to not use them again, run chkdsk like this:

chkdsk c: /f /b /r

Click to expand...

I've run chkdsk c: /f /b /r . . . and it finally finished after a couple of hours!

Winuser said:

If it was my computer, I would run the chkdsk command as a temporary fix until I could replace the drive.

Click to expand...

Bree said:

I see from your specs that all your drives are HDDs. If you read the SMART data from the problem drive you will probably see a non-zero raw value for the Pending Sector Count and possibly the Reallocated Sector Count too. For a healthy disk both of these should be zero.

An HDD's internal controller has a pool of spare sectors it can use to replace (reallocate) any weak ones. But it can only do a reallocation while the bad sector is not in use. I would back up the entire drive concerned, delete all its partitions, then create one partition from the whole drive. Perform a Full format on this (not a quick one) and all sectors will be tested, with any poor sectors being reallocated.

You can then restore the backup to what will now be an error free drive. How much longer it will stay that way is another question. Keep an eye on the SMART data and if the Pending Sector Count starts to increase again then it's time to look at replacing the drive.

Click to expand...

I'm planning to do a clean install of Windows 11 over the Easter weekend. If I have any difficulty, I'll persevere with the chkdsk solution until I can replace the drive.

FreeBooter said:

Run Seagate SeaTools

SeaTools Bootable provides a basic suite of diagnostic utilities in an environment independent of your installed operating system. This will allow you to test, diagnose, and possibly repair your hard drive, even if your operating system environment is inaccessible.

Click to expand...

I've downloaded SeaTools Bootable and created a 'bootable' flash drive following your guidance. However, I can't boot from it.

I do have Seatools for Windows would that do instead?



Should I run the 'Long Generic Test' (on disk 0)?

IanMosley said:

I've run chkdsk c: /f /b /r . . . and it finally finished after a couple of hours!




I'm planning to do a clean install of Windows 11 over the Easter weekend. If I have any difficulty, I'll persevere with the chkdsk solution until I can replace the drive.

Click to expand...

You may not experience any more problems with the drive but you never know. If you keep up to date backups you should be ok until you can or need to replace the drive.

I don't think you can scan and repair bad sectors while Windows 11 is booted, so the only way to do it is with a bootable version of the SeaTools.

As @Bree suggested, clean installing doing full format will mark any bad sector as not usable, to do that you need to open the Command Prompt and delete partition and format drive.

From Windows 11 installation screen, press Shift + F10 to open Command Prompt.

Execute
Diskpart
command.

Execute
list disk
command.

Execute
select disk 0
command, replace the 0 zero with the hard drive you want to full format.

Execute
clean
command to delete partitions and data on select hard drive.

Execute
create partition primary
command.

Execute
FORMAT FS=NTFS
command to full format the hard drive.

Execute
Exit
command and close the Command Prompt.

Click Refresh on the Windows 11 installation screen and install Windows 11 on the hard drive you have formatted.

IanMosley said:

I've run chkdsk c: /f /b /r . . . and it finally finished after a couple of hours!




I'm planning to do a clean install of Windows 11 over the Easter weekend. If I have any difficulty, I'll persevere with the chkdsk solution until I can replace the drive.

Click to expand...

Yes it takes a long time because it attempts to read each sector on the disk and rereads and compares. Before you do the clean install. run chkdsk. Then once you are satisfied with the clean install, back it up.

IanMosley said:

I've downloaded SeaTools Bootable and created a 'bootable' flash drive following your guidance. However, I can't boot from it.

Click to expand...

You would need to turn off secure boot in bios to run the Seatools Boot Disk.

"Checking bad sector is read-only, but repairing bad sector destroys data saved on or near bad sectors. Please backup or recover data before trying to repairing bad sectors.

Not all bad sectors can be repaired by software"

FreeBooter said:

Run Seagate SeaTools

Please download and use the SeaTools Bootable to create a bootable USB that you can use to diagnose hard drives and monitor SSDs.

Click to expand...

I've run this and the result are atattached as 'WD-WCC6Y3SC915Z.log' & the 'Device Management.png' - Drive 0 - shows partitions on the drive

The 'Seatools for Windows.txt' is an extract from the Seatools for Windows User Guide.

The hard drive pass the long generic test, this means there is no bad sectors on the hard drive.

text file says for bad sector found sometimes can be fixed using seatools or diskgenius.

SeaTools forWindows

4. Bad Sector Found
IMPORTANT: Please read and carefully consider all of the following information about your "Bad Sector Found" options.
A bad sector is a small 512-byte area on the disk drive that is reporting errors and cannot be accessed properly. New bad sectors, sometimes called grown defects, are often caused by some kind of physical damage. If a file or folder uses this sector, then the file is already incomplete or corrupt because the bytes are not readable.

Click to expand...

if you dont have any the problem is elsewhere.

Backup your data, just in case, and then proceed to fix the baf sectors.