Can you copy bad sectors

Step 3. Configure detailed settings for the disk cloning process. DiskGenius provides a couple of solutions to control the disk cloning process when bad sectors are encountered on source disk, and you can flexibly make use of these settings based on the actual status of the disk to be cloned.

Skip a defined number of sectors by default : When a bad sector is encountered, it skips the specified number of subsequent sectors. Sector-by-sector copy : When a bad sector is encountered, it does not skip it.

Instead, it writes zeros or fill with defined strings to the bad sector's counterpart on target disk and continues to read remaining sector one after another. Those skipped sectors will be copied again after the process completes.

Try to copy bad sectors after normal sectors are copied time-consuming : If this option is selected, when the normal copy process finishes, the program will recopy every bad sector segment skipped previously.

Fill bad sectors with strings : This option is used to specify strings to fill bad sectors. When bad sectors are encountered, the corresponding sectors on destination disk will be filled with the specified strings.

It is recommended to check this option when copying for the first time, so that you can recopy those filled sectors. R ecopy filled sectors of target disk : Before starting copying process, the program reads and analyzes sector data on target disk, adding sectors filled with specified strings to the list to be copied and filtering unfilled sectors.

When analysis completed, it copies sectors in the list only. Step 4. Click Copy button to start copying sectors and wait for disk cloning process to complete. The disk cloning process may take long time if there is large amount of data to copy, too many bad sectors on the disk, source or destination disk is slow.

Besides, you may need to recopy those skipped sectors after the first copy so as to get a complete copy as much as possible. Anyway, this might be a time-consuming process and needs patience. As soon as you get the sector-by-sector copy of your hard drive that have bad sectors, you can proceed the data recovery from target disk or disk image.

DiskGenius makes the recovery easy to follow:. Select the partition that contains lost data on the destination disk, select File Recovery button and click Start button to search for lost data. If you scan original hard drive with bad sectors, scanning process may be very slow or even stop at some point. While, now scanning the destination disk or disk image won't be disturbed by bad sectors.

Copying means reading from the source and writing to the destination. Bad sectors can not be read, so there is nothing to write to the destination. Most copy utilities will fill in all zeros for sectors they can not read. Bad sectors are not transferred during the cloning process. One problem you may have is file damage depending on how many unreadable bad sectors you have. You may see some damaged files that have missing data or "holes" in them.

There are advanced cloning methods that can identify which files are damaged due to bad sectors. Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group.

Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. Does cloning a hard drive also copy over errors like bad sectors? Ask Question. Asked 10 years, 6 months ago. Active 10 years, 3 months ago. I would assume that the hard drive itself or any checkdisk-style process run on the drive will map those sectors elsewhere so that the cloning software doesn't try to write data to them, but that has no impact on the actual bad sectors present on the drive, and doesn't change the answer to your question.

You do have one problem, however. If the hard drive you're trying to clone has lots of bad sectors on it, then data may have already been lost. When sectors on a hard drive go bad, the information stored in those sectors is at risk. Bad sectors are areas where the magnetic recording on the hard drive has become distorted.

Although some recovery of bad sectors is possible, such errors are a warning sign that the drive may soon develop other problems or fail completely. Transferring the files to a new drive helps protect your important data.