Wednesday, March 27, 2013

How to Fix Bad Sector on Western Digital SATA HDDs?

   Hard disk drive is one of the most important component of a CPU. The operating system and all of your files are saved on it. Most people hate when their hard drives crashed suddenly. Like what happened on mine.

      Recently, Windows doesn't boot up any longer (Error: \boot\BCD 0xc00000e9). It keeps on repairing start-up as well as the disk errors. If you have experienced the same thing, you might have experienced waiting for the repair setup to finish for a couple of hours and yet it doesn't resolve the issue. You'll just find out in the end that your hard drive is failing.

      I never had a failing hard drive except for what happened to my 80GB Western Digital HDD. It is the only hard disk installed on my PC and all of my important files are saved on it. I brought it to the store where I originally bought it from and the technician informed me that the HDD crashed and it has a lot of bad sectors. Since I need to go online most of the time, I decided to buy a new hard drive (500GB). The technician informed me to connect my old hard drive as secondary after I installed Windows on the new hard drive. Just in case I'll be able to rescue my old files.

       So, I did a fresh installation of Windows 7 on the new hard drive and followed what the technician said. When I reboot the system, Windows detected the second hard drive and ran the CHKDSK automatically since it's corrupted. It ran for 15 minutes. Windows showed these common errors:

"File record is unreadable"
"Connecting error in index"
"Insufficient disk space"

      I let Windows finish checking the disk then it booted normally from the primary hard drive. I was so lucky to find out that I can still access the files on my old hard drive but I noticed some of it were already gone.

       Now, I don't have problems accessing the remaining files on my old hard drive but every time I reboot, CHKDSK always run. It always takes time. I tried to find another tool that can fix it permanently until I came across Western Digital's official website. I found a tool that can run a test and repair bad sectors on the SATA HDDs. It is called Data Lifeguard Diagnostic for Windows. I was relieved when I discovered it. It's very easy to use and it is the silver bullet to the problem on my old hard drive. It repaired all bad sectors. In the end, it was able to fix all the errors on the hard disk. Everything went back to normal. Now, I have 580GB of hard disk space in total.

      If you own a Western Digital SATA HDD and you have issues with it like mine, you can try using Download Data Lifeguard to fix it. Here's a guide for you to follow.

     Fixing Bad Sectors on SATA HDDs
     - Step 1: Download Data LifeGuard Diagnostic (WinDlg_124.zip) here: http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=605&sid=3&lang=en
Data LifeGuard Diagnostic tool is available both in Mac and Windows.

     - Step 2: Extract WinDlg_124.zip.

     - Step 3: Inside WinDlg_124 folder, run WinDlg.exe as administrator (Right click - Run as administrator).

    - Step 4: Put a check mark on I accept this License Agreement.

    - Step 5: Click Next. Let the program detect the installed hard drives on your PC.

    - Step 6: Select and highlight the hard disk drive that you want to run a test.

    - Step 7: Click the run test button or the icon after the word Click.

Caution: Make sure that to close any files saved on the hard disk before running a test.

    - Step 8: In DLGDIAG - Select An Option window, choose EXTENDED Test.

    - Step 9: Click Start. Depending on the hard disk volume, the test might run over an hour. A typical 80GB Western Digital HDD can be tested within 35-40 minutes.

    - Step 10: Wait for the test to finish.

    - Step 11: Click Repair.

    - Step 12: Wait for the confirmation that the hard disk drive repair is completed.

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