If you need a Western Digital HDD repair tool, you are in the right place. This post shows how to check WD HDD bad sectors and how to repair Western Digital HDD in several ways. You can replace the WD HDD with bad sectors without losing data with the help of EaseUS Disk Copy.
Western Digital hard drives are one of the most popular hard drives in the world. When bad sectors appear on the disk, especially on WD My Passport hard drives, it will result in hard drive crashes or failures, poor performance, data loss disasters, system boot problems, etc. It's quite difficult and annoying if your WD HDD contains bad sectors.
Read this tutorial and learn how to check Western Digital hard drive bad sectors and replace WD HDD without losing data. Besides, three simple WD HDD repair tools and solutions are introduced to help corrupted WD HDD effectively.
| Methods | Effectiveness | Difficulty |
|---|---|---|
| Perform Low-level Format | Medium - It can resize the disk layout and structure, but severe data loss is unavoidable. | ⭐⭐ |
| Replace WD Hard Drive with Bad Sector with a New HDD | 👍High - Help you clone a drive with bad sectors to a new one without any data loss. | ⭐ |
🔥Related reading: Western Digital Cloning Software
When you encounter bad sectors on WD HDD, the first thing to do is to know the situation. You need to check the bad sectors.
To check the bad sectors on your hard disk, there are free tools that can help. Select one to test and check how many bad sectors are existing on your drive.
Trusted and recommended by millions of users, EaseUS Partition Master Free, with its Surface Test feature, can check bad sectors on hard disk, USB flash drive, pen drive, SD memory card, and other storage devices without formatting. The Surface Test feature will identify bad sectors by reviewing the hard drive.
Step 1. Open EaseUS Partition Master. Right-click the disk that you want to check, and then click "Surface Test".
Step 2. The operation will be immediately performed and all bad sectors will be marked as red.
Once it finds bad sectors, it will make bad sectors with red color and let the operating system not to use them so to protect the saved data. You will know how many bad sectors are existing on your WD hard drive from the test result.
Many users mistakenly take Western Digital Data Lifeguard as a bad sector repair tool as it can test the existing bad sectors on WD HDD and other types of storage devices.
Its Extended Test feature actually can only be applied to detect bad sectors. The test may take several hours (which is not as efficient as EaseUS Partition Master), depending on the size of the drive.
Step 1. Download Data LifeGuard Diagnostic (WinDlg_124.zip) and extract WinDlg.exe from the ZIP file.
Step 2. Right-click WinDlg.exe and select "Run as Administrator".
Step 3. Put a checkmark on "I accept this License Agreement" and click "Next" to continue. This will let the program detect the installed hard drives on your PC.
Step 4. Select and highlight the hard disk you want to test and click the "Run test" button.
Step 5. In DLGDIAG, select "Option", and choose "EXTENDED Test".
Step 6. Click "Start", and then wait for the test to finish.
Step 7. Close the test window, and click "View Test Result" on the new pop-up window.
After the disk bad sector detection is completed, you can choose different processing methods according to the number of the bad sector.
If the test result displays some bad sectors on your WD HDD, you can try to remove or repair bad sectors using the low-level format. It will regenerate the disk layout and structure. But serious data loss is unavoidable. Also, it cannot be executed by ordinary users, with serious data loss.
A better resolution for this case is to replace the bad WD hard drive with a good one, as recommended in the following method. But if you insist, back up data to another disk first and then take your drive to the local repair center or your manufacturer for a low-level format.
If the disk is badly damaged, it is impossible to repair the bad sectors. In case of this, your wise choice is to replace the bad WD hard disk with a new one.
To avoid data loss, we suggest that you take a powerful disk cloning software - EaseUS Disk Copy to help you switch the hard drive by directly cloning WD HDD to a new hard drive. This capable disk copy tool allows you to clone hard drives with bad sectors, clone hard drive that won't boot, Clone HDD to M.2 SSD, and so on. In addition, you can use it to migrate Windows 10 from an HDD to an SSD without losing data easily and quickly.
For disk cloning, the video has listed the details you need to mention. Watch the video tutorial and learn how to replace a Western Digital hard drive with a bad sector with a good one.
Do remember to connect your good new hard drive to the computer as a storage device before cloning the Western Digital hard drive with bad sectors to the good one. EaseUS Disk Copy will skip the existing bad sectors, only taking your data to the new disk.
Step 1: Download, install and run EaseUS Disk Copy on your PC.
Click "Disk Mode" and select the hard drive that you want to copy or clone. Click "Next" to continue.
Step 2: Select the destination disk.
Note: The destination disk should be at least the same big or even larger than the source disk if you want to copy or clone the source hard disk.
Step 3: Check and edit the disk layout.
If your destination disk is an SSD drive, do remember to Check the option if the target is SSD.
Step 4: Click "OK" to confirm if the program asks to erase data on the destination disk.
Step 5: Click "Proceed" to start the hard drive cloning process.
All you need to do is to wait for the process to complete. You can apply and activate this software to help you upgrade and clone the hard drive with bad sectors and restore data as much as possible.
When the cloning finishes, shut down your computer, insert the newly upgraded hard drive to your computer and replace the old Western Digital hard drive, and set the computer to boot from a new hard drive instead of the old one in BIOS. Then you can see the precious data you have restored.
The bad sectors cause physical damage to the disk and cannot be repaired. However, hard disk logical damage caused by other reasons, such as the corrupted file system, can be fixed. Here are the three solutions to repair a corrupted WD HDD.
Step 1. Open This PC in File Explorer. Right-click the WD hard drive partition and select "Properties".
Step 2. On the Tools tab, click the "Check" button under the top. Then, click "Error checking" > "Scan drive if wanted or Repair drive if errors were found".
Step 1. Run CHKDSK command to fix soft bad sectors.
Step 2. Format hard drive to usable again
The Check File System feature in EaseUS Partition Master is a free alternative tool to the CHKDSK command. You may also apply this feature to repair logical bad sectors on your WD HDD.
Check the full guide on how to use the Check File System of EaseUS partition manager to repair the corrupted WD HDD.
This page mainly talks about how to test bad sectors existing on your WD hard disk and how to repair bad sectors on your WD HDD.
What's more, in the last part, you can also learn three useful ways to repair corrupted hard drives by checking and fixing the corrupted file system. Hope these guides can help you.
1. Does chkdsk fix bad sectors?
CHKDSK may scan your hard drive and provide you with a report, or it can scan your disk and fix any bad sectors or file issues. An issue with the Windows filing system is a file error. A portion of your hard drive, known as a "bad sector", cannot hold data.
2. What causes bad sectors on HDD?
Due to manufacturing faults, a brand-new drive could come with a few harmless bad sectors. Larger patches develop over time due to head collisions, wear, and tear, physical trauma, or dust infiltration.
3. Does formatting HDD fix bad sectors?
The bad sectors on a hard drive cannot be fixed by formatting. Hard drive regions known as "bad sectors" are physically broken or malfunctioning and cannot be fixed by formatting the drive.
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