How to Recover Data from Hard Drive with Bad Sectors

You can recover data from a hard drive with bad sectors using specialized software like EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard, which can scan and recover data from damaged drives, including those with bad sectors. This software can help you extract your files and data without needing to repair the drive itself, allowing you to preserve your important files and documents. You can also try using a USB drive to create a live environment and then use tools like chkdsk or fsck to scan the drive and recover data, but this method may not be as effective as using dedicated recovery software.

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

Bad sectors on a hard drive or external storage device occur when the disk surface is physically damaged or the transistors fail, making sectors inaccessible or unwriteable, leading to data loss and potentially rendering the device unusable.

We highly recommend getting and restoring 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 due to bad sectors, the best approach is not to repair the existing bad sectors, but to clone the hard drive data skipping bad sectors to a new secure drive. A reliable solution is to use a 100% working disk cloning software, such as Qiling Disk Copy, that fully supports all Windows system disk cloning or hard drive upgrading with simple clicks.

Your Safe & Effective Qiling Disk Copy

You can use a specialized software like Clonezilla or Acronis True Image to clone a hard disk even with bad sectors. These tools can bypass the bad sectors and clone the good data from the original disk to a new one, effectively creating an exact replica of the original disk.
To make a full copy of contents on a disk and move your data, system, or apps to another hard drive, you can use a process called cloning. This involves creating an exact duplicate of your existing drive, including all files, programs, and settings, and then transferring it to the new hard drive.
It supports one-click OS migration to avoid reinstalling the operating system.

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To clone a hard drive with bad sectors, you can use a disk cloning software to transfer the data from the original disk to a new one, excluding the bad sectors. This process can be initiated by creating a bootable disk in advance to ensure a higher success rate. The steps to start the process include following a tutorial to create a bootable disk, which can then be used to clone the hard drive data without the bad sectors to a new disk.

Step 1: Download, install and run Qiling Disk Copy on your PC.

Step 2. Choose "Disk/Partition clone" in the tool page to start.

Step 3. Select the hard drive that you want to copy or clone. Click Next to continue.

Step 4. Select the destination disk where you want to clone/copy the old disk and click Next to continue.

To ensure a successful copy or clone of the source hard disk, the destination disk should be at least as large or even larger than the source disk. This ensures that all data from the source disk can be accurately replicated on the destination disk, without any loss or truncation of data.

Step 5: Check and edit the disk layout.

If your destination disk is an SSD drive, be sure to select the "Optimize for SSD" option when the target is an SSD.

Step 6: Click "Proceed" to start the hard drive cloning process.

A warning message informs you that the data on the destination disk will be overwritten. If you don't have important data on the destination disk, click "OK" to proceed.

If the hard drive is not functioning correctly and can't even boot, consider cloning the failing hard drive to a new HDD or SSD. This process involves copying the contents of the old drive to the new one, effectively replacing the old drive with a working one.

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

Restoring existing and lost data from a hard drive with a bad sector to a secure disk or external storage device is another way to get data off the drive.

Deep Data Recovery is a professional hard drive data recovery software that can find and recover all existing and lost data from a hard drive with bad sectors, in addition to its other capabilities.

Recover lost or deleted files, documents, photos, audio, music, and emails with ease.
Recover files from various storage devices, including SD cards, emptied recycle bins, memory cards, and flash drives.
Support is available for recovering data in the event of sudden deletion, formatting, hard drive corruption, or a virus attack.

If the hard drive with bad sectors is still working on your PC, you can restore and retrieve data from it. To do this, follow these steps: first, stop using the hard drive to prevent further damage; next, run a disk check to identify the bad sectors; then, use a data recovery software to scan the drive and recover any accessible data; finally, consider replacing the hard drive to prevent further data loss and ensure the integrity of your system.

Step 1. Scan the hard drive partition

To recover data from a hard drive partition using Open Deep Data Recovery, select the partition where the lost data is located and click the "Scan" button. This will initiate the scanning process to locate and recover the lost data.

Step 2. Preview found hard drive data

The Filter and Search features allow you to locate lost files based on file types, names, or extensions. By double-clicking on the found files, you can preview them.

Step 3. Recover lost hard drive data.

To recover lost files from a hard drive, select the files you want to recover and click the "Recover" button to save them to another secure location.

If your hard drive is completely dead, you can recover data from it using the steps outlined in the guide "recover data from a dead external hard drive". The steps are the same as those for a regular hard drive.

Conclusion

Bad sectors on a hard drive can cause complete inaccessibility and data loss, but solutions like Qiling Disk Copy can help solve hard disk errors and make data recovery possible.

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