When your hard drive develops bad sectors, your files can quickly become inaccessible or corrupted. These issues often happen without warning and can lead to serious data loss. If you’re dealing with a failing drive, you’re likely searching for ways to perform data recovery from hard drive with bad sectors—and Five Star Data Recovery is here to help.
We specialize in helping clients recover data from hard drive with bad sectors by using professional tools and cleanroom environments that minimize further damage. Whether it’s an external hard drive or internal HDD, we have the tools and experience to recover what matters most.
A bad sector is a small portion of your hard drive that becomes unreadable or damaged. These areas may develop due to wear and tear, manufacturing flaws, or physical damage. Over time, bad sectors on your hard drive can spread, affecting your file system and causing operating system instability or data loss.
There are two main types:
It’s not always easy to tell if your drive has bad sectors, but common signs include:
Every time you try to read or write data on a sector that’s gone bad, the drive may struggle and cause file corruption. In the worst cases, the system can overwrite important data or make the entire drive unreadable. If you rely on data recovery software, there’s a risk of worsening the situation if the drive has physical damage.
We recommend shutting the drive down and contacting a professional drive data recovery service, especially if your data is important or irreplaceable.
You may have come across programs that claim to fix bad sectors or recover data from failing drives. While data recovery software may help in some situations, it also carries significant risk.
These tools work by scanning the drive over and over, which can further damage unstable sectors. If your drive has physical damage, DIY attempts can make recovery harder—or impossible.
Instead of using software that might cause more data loss, let professionals safely clone and extract your files.
At Five Star Data Recovery, we follow a secure and proven process for drives with bad sectors:
We test the drive to confirm whether the issue is logical, physical, or both.
We create a sector-by-sector clone of the drive using specialized hardware. This prevents further wear and preserves your data as-is.
We use metadata and partition information to locate bad sectors and reconstruct the file system.
We safely extract recoverable files from the cloned image.
We check the files for integrity and return your recovered data on a new external hard drive.
We work with all major brands and models of hard drives, including:
Whether you’re facing a failed backup drive or a crashing system disk, we can help recover data from hard drive with bad sectors in most cases.
Bad sectors may form for many reasons, such as:
Understanding the cause helps us determine the best way of repairing bad sectors and safeguarding your data.
While not all bad sectors can be avoided, you can reduce the risk:
Catching bad sectors on your hard drive early can make a big difference in avoiding data loss.
From data loss emergencies to advanced drive data recovery, we’ve helped individuals, businesses, and IT teams retrieve important files from failed drives with bad sectors.
Don’t risk permanent loss by using a failing drive. Whether it’s freezing, clicking, or just not opening files, we’re ready to help.
If you need data recovery from hard drive with bad sectors, reach out to Five Star Data Recovery today. We’ll perform a free diagnostic and walk you through every step.
We’re here to help you recover data from hard drive with bad sectors safely and effectively.
External drives are more prone to bad sectors due to frequent handling and power interruptions. Drops, cable issues, and improper ejections can all lead to problems that affect both hardware and the file system.
If your external hard drive is disconnecting, slowing down, or making noises—stop using it immediately. Continued use can increase the number of bad sectors and reduce the chance of a full recovery.
A professional photographer came to us after their 2TB external drive started freezing during file transfers. It contained years of weddings, portrait sessions, and client archives. The drive appeared in disk management but would disappear from the desktop frequently.
Our diagnostic revealed over 1,000 bad sectors. We created a secure disk image, filtered out the unstable regions, and recovered over 98% of the original file structure. All recovered data was delivered on a new portable drive—ready for editing, backup, and client delivery.
Need your files back fast? We offer two levels of expedited services:
These fees are in addition to standard recovery costs and are non-refundable. If you’re dealing with tight deadlines, our expedited services are your fastest path to a solution.
Lab Hours
Mon – Friday: 10am to 6pm
Saturday: 10am to 2pm
Lab Hours
Mon – Friday: 10am to 6pm
Saturday: 10am to 2pm
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