Well, the only way to repair bad sectors would be a low-level format. And contrary to common believe, that’s not possible with modern drives.
Why?
Because it requires special technology that is way to expensive and therefore not present in modern drives anymore. At least not in the cheap consumer electronics.
What’s a bad sector?
Well, computers are all about ones and zeroes and it’s respective representations. This also goes for storage. No matter which medium. So, all your data is represented in some form of ones and zeroes. Two different states.
So, imagine this this spinning platter and on it these microscopically tiny iron flakes that can be moved via magnet. Yes, we are talking about a HDD here. But there is a similar principle in place for SSDs. Works differently, same problem.
Now imagine a road. And the flakes are houses, either on the left or on the right side of the road. Get it? Ones and zeroes, right?
Now imagine rail between the left and the right side and those flakes having wheels to ride the rails.
That’s all purely for the imagination.
So, data is represented in ones and zeroes. You write data, the wheel-flakes go left to right or right to left or stay where they are. Ones and zeroes.
To make this a little bit more complicated, we now add earth rotation… because the platters in your hard drive are actually actually spinning.
So, one day your foot accidentally kicks the PC and flakes are jumping off their rails. 5 of them lie on their top… on their neighbor’s rails. Now consider the rotation… they start throwing off even more of the flakes and more and more of them get misaligned.
So, how do you get them back on the rails?
To do so, you would need special technical equipment, right? BUT THERE IS NONE!
See, the software you are asking for, is like telling the flakes to jump back to their place and on their rails. That ain’t going to work. There is a difference between telling a crane operator to put them back where they belong and just yelling at the flakes to pull themselves together and get back where they belong. One would be working and the other one not. It’s like talking to a rock. Unless you have telekinetic abilities, it won’t work!
On the other hand, did you read this carefully?
Because if you did, you should have learned, that this is going to affect other areas. Especially when it comes to HDDs. The problem is going to increase over time. Maybe not so much with SSDs though. Although, they don’t get better over time either. They might have advantages in this area, but disadvantages in other.
Meaning, if your drive has bad sectors, the best thing you can do is, you backup your data and find a new drive before it’s to late! Because even if total failure might not happen from one day to the other, critical failure might just be around the corner. It’s not a question “if”. It’s a question “when”.
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