If you start encountering bad sectors on your hard drive and decide to format it, will it “remember” those bad sectors afterward or not? Today’s SuperUser Q&A post helps answer a curious reader’s question about bad sectors and formatting.
Today’s Question & Answer session comes to us courtesy of SuperUser—a subdivision of Stack Exchange, a community-driven grouping of Q&A web sites.
Photo courtesy of Scott Schiller (Flickr).
The Question
SuperUser reader chris wants to know if a hard drive remembers bad sectors after formatting:
Does a hard drive remember bad sectors after formatting?
The Answer
SuperUser contributors Ben N and harsh have the answer for us. First up, Ben N:
Followed by the answer from harsh:
Further Reading: NTFS System (Metadata) Files
The hard drive is what remembers bad sectors. Exactly how it does that depends on the model, but most modern hard drives automatically detect and remap dead sectors so that the operating system does not even know there is a problem. In that case, nothing the operating system does can affect the disk’s internal bookkeeping.
Have something to add to the explanation? Sound off in the comments. Want to read more answers from other tech-savvy Stack Exchange users? Check out the full discussion thread here.
