What causes Bad Sectors on Hard Drives?

Within each hard drive, there are platters with tiny clusters of storage space known as sectors. Sectors become defective when they do not respond when reading or writing requests. There are two different types of bad sectors. The first type of a bad sector is called a (logical) soft bad sector which means that the sector can no longer read the data and the operating system is giving you an error correcting code (ECC). Soft bad sectors are caused by software issues. This is repairable and can be done by using a few different methods. Secondly, the other type is called a (physical) hard bad sector which is when you have physical damage to the hard drive. Scratches on the platter can lead to more hard bad sectors.

What causes Bad Sectors on Hard Drives?

Physical damage is the traditional cause for bad sectors. Common issues occur from manufacturing errors, normal wear and tear, dropped drive, dust in the hard drive, etc. Bad sectors can also lead to data loss which will inquire a certified data recovery technician to assist in recovering your data. Luckily, at Five Star Data Recovery, our specialized specialists in data recovery use top of the line equipment to recover data from bad sectors by slowing down the rotation of the platters to recover any data.