Programs for the treatment of hard drive. Testing Hard Drives

Even on the most high-quality and reliable HDD, after some time after installation, the broken sectors start appearing in the PC. When the number of bad blocks becomes large, the hard disk stops working and needs to be replaced. However, often a hard drive can be restored using third-party software. In this article, we will describe the programs for treating the hard drive and provide instructions for working with them.

Broken Sectors

HDD records user information on magnetic disks. Their surface is divided into paths and sectors. If you can not extract data from a particular sector, it is called bad or bad. It's difficult to restore bad blocks, but it's quite real.

Remember that after the treatment, the information from the HDD should be rewritten to another drive, and eventually the hard disk is replaced. If the winchester began to appear bad sectors, then after the repair their distribution will not stop. Another failure of the device can happen at any time.

VictoriaHDD

VictoriaHDD - program for the treatment of hard disk sectors, is considered one of the most effective and absolutely free. The application runs in DOS mode, so it requires some preparatory steps. First you need to create a bootable USB flash drive.

• Download the image of the VictoriaHDD utility in the ISO format.
• Also download the WinSetupFromUSB application and run it.
• In the drop-down menu, select the USB drive, which will later become bootable.
• Check the box next to "Autoformat".
• Mark the item "Linux ISO" and indicate the full path to the image of the program VictoriaHDD.
• Click the "Go" button to start the file recording process.

BIOS Settings

Since the programs for treating the hard disk work in DOS mode, you need to configure the BIOS.

• Restart the computer.
• After power-on, press the "DEL" or "F8" button several times to enter the "BIOS Setup" utility. On some devices, other keys are set to run BIOS settings. To find out what exactly is responsible for entering the "Setup BIOS" on your computer, read the information at the bottom of the screen immediately after turning on the machine.
• Go to the "Main" section and find the "SATA Mode" item. Press "ENTER" and select "IDE".
• In the "First Boot Device" field, set the value to "USB".
• Press the "F10" key to save the settings.
• The computer will then restart.

Verification and recovery

If all the above actions are performed correctly, after restarting the PC, VictoriaHDD will start automatically. To start the recovery of the hard drive:

• Press the key with the English letter "P" on the keyboard.
• In the menu that opens, select the port to which the HDD is connected. Today, almost all the drives work through the SATA socket, so you need to set the switch to the "Ext PCI ATA / SATA" position.
• Press "F9", the information from the SMART table appears on the screen. Pay special attention to the column "Current pending sectors". It is here that the number of sectors whose data is not read is indicated. Remember or write down this number.
• Press the "F4" key and start the scan in "BB: Erase 256" mode. The utility will try to find all the bad blocks and restore them. In this case, the information stored in them will be deleted.
• Reopen the SMART table and look at the number of bad sectors. If any of them could not be recovered, it is worthwhile scanning the HDD in a different mode.
• Press the "F4" button and select "BB: Classic Remap". Now, when an affected sector is found, the application will not restore it, but will mark the non-working one. This approach will stop the spread of bad blocks.
• When VictoriaHDD finishes checking, restart the PC.

Programs for hard drive: tools built into the OS

After scanning the drive, the utility VictoriaHDD should be checked by the utility installed in the operating system by default.

• Open My Computer.
• Right-click the local disk icon.
• Click the "Tools" tab.
• Select the item "Perform verification".
• In the window that opens, check the box next to "Automatically correct errors".
• Click the "Start" button and wait until the program finishes running.
• Do not turn off the PC before the scan process is complete.

HDD Regenerator

HDD Regenerator is a free program for the treatment of hard disk. The main advantages of the utility are friendly interface. Many users choose HDD Regenerator just for this reason.

• Close all applications and start HDD Regenerator.
• Open the "Restore" menu and click on "Start processing".
• If a window with a warning about BIOS settings appears on the screen, click on the "No" button.
• Choose a drive that needs treatment.
• After that, the command line will open on the screen, where you will enter a number from 1 to 4.
• Enter "2" and press "ENTER".
• The utility asks you to specify where to start the scan. Just click on the "Enter" button.
• The application will scan the HDD and display information about the bad blocks.
• When the test is complete, enter "2", now the utility will not only scan the hard drive, but also try to restore the broken sectors.

I must say that the program for treating the hard disk of Windows 7 is very slow. Sometimes the process is delayed for 2-3 days. However, HDD Regenerator really tries to restore the ability of blocks to store data, rather than simply marking them as unused, which explains the long time of scanning.

MHDD

Functionality MHDD is almost completely analogous to VictoriaHDD. The application runs in DOS mode. With it, you can view the SMART table, perform diagnostics and repair the hard disk. The program is not presented in Russian.

• Create a bootable USB flash drive, as for the VictoriaHDD utility.
• Configure the BIOS and restart the computer.
• Press F2 and select the device you want to work with.
• To scan the hard disk surface, enter the word "SCAN" or use F4. The screen displays the settings in which all destructive functions are disabled (erasing, deleting bad blocks).
• Press "F4" again. The scan starts and the display shows a table in which the colors of the cells will change during the test: white, gray, green - the sector is operational; Yellow - there is a risk of damage; Red - the unit is damaged.

If there are bad blocks on the drive:

• Copy all the information to another HDD.
• Enter the ERASE command, which will completely erase the data from each sector. This will get rid of soft-bad-blocks.
• If this does not solve the problem, press the F4 key and turn on the REMAP option. Now the utility, like the programs built in Windows to treat the hard drive, simply mark the broken sectors, and they will no longer be used.