A bad sector occurs when a small part of a computer hard drive can no longer be read or written to. It is caused by physical disk problems and cannot be repaired. Hard drive manufacturers have implemented software to monitor disk integrity, and the term has also been applied to solid-state media.
A bad sector is a term used when one of the smallest storage drives on a computer hard drive is no longer usable. A bad sector means that one or more sectors on a drive can no longer be read or written to by the computer. While a bad sector means that that small part of the drive can no longer be used, it doesn’t necessarily mean the entire drive is bad.
The term originated on platter-style storage disks, in which a rotating circular platter is read and written to by heads capable of translating magnetic fields on the platter into electric currents. The disk platter is divided into several parts for storage, the smallest part being a sector that can hold data 512 bytes or larger, depending on the disk. A hard drive platter can be visualized as a circular track. It is made up of many concentric rings, which are further divided into tiny segments called sectors where data is stored. In the case of a bad sector, there is some kind of hole in the track that can no longer be driven.
The causes of bad sectors are varied. When a bad sector occurs, it’s most likely due to a problem with the physical disk, rather than a software or operating system problem. The first place a person is likely to hear about a bad sector is when their computer’s operating system software starts acting up.
It is usually not possible to repair a bad sector. Spinning platters eventually wear out, so some bad sectors are inevitable and rarely noticed by the average computer user. It is only when numerous bad sectors start appearing that the drive is facing imminent and complete failure.
Most computer operating systems now come standard with some sort of drive monitoring software. To further help address the problem, hard drive manufacturers have also implemented software on the drives that monitor the integrity of the disk. The Self-monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology (SMART) system built into many hard drives can communicate with software on a computer that will alert the user when something is wrong with a drive.
As solid-state media has become increasingly popular, the term for a bad sector has made its way to those types of storage media as well. With solid-state media like flash memory, however, there are no traces laid out on circular platters. Instead, a series of transistors work with the electronic signals. In this case, therefore, the bad sector moniker is used to identify when a transistor has failed.
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