The hard drive consists of aluminum or glass plates coated with a ferromagnetic material. divided into tracks, tracks are divided into sectors. Servo marks are applied to the magnetic surface. Thanks to them, the hard drive head quickly finds the desired sector. If there is mechanical damage or as a result of physical wear, the disk may become unstable. This means that there are other errors on it.

To detect bad blocks and other faults, special utilities are used. The utility is able to scan HDD sectors and provide information to the user. The disk condition is assessed using other data as well.

SMART technology allows you to use built-in self-diagnostic equipment and predict the failure time of the device. All SMART readings can be divided into 2 groups:

1. Parameters of natural aging of the disk (number of revolutions, head movements, on-off cycles).
2. Current drive parameters (height of the head above the surface, number of reassigned sectors and search errors, number of search errors).

In the list of attributes produced by SMART, the defining ones are:

1. Reallocated Sectors Count. Indicates the number of sector remap operations. If the disk detects a read/write error, it is moved to a special backup section called remap. The transfer process is called remapping. On modern disks you cannot see the bad sector, since it is hidden in a reassigned sector. Bad sectors are replaced with spare ones. If the Reallocated Sectors Count indicator turns yellow, the specialist determines that there are few reserve sectors left.
2. Current Pending Errors Count. It is considered one of the critical indicators. Takes into account sectors that were not read the first time and are marked as unstable. The decision on them is postponed until the next reading. If the reading attempt is successful, the sector will become stable. If the error occurs again, a recovery attempt will be made. If unsuccessful, the drive will perform a remapping operation. An increase in the Current Pending Errors Count attribute indicates disk degradation.

Unstable sectors appear very often. During a sudden power outage, faulty power supply, or improper shutdown of the OS, a disk write error may occur. Trying a scan will help bring some of them back into service.

If in general there are no comments on the disk’s operation and other S.M.A.R.T. indicators. is normal, then if unstable sectors appear, there is no need to take any action. A non-zero value for the Current Pending Sector Count parameter indicates a problem, but does not always mean that the problem is in the disk itself.

The article contains a lot of information not only about the Victoria program, but also about the DMDE program, with which we will create a sector-by-sector image of a faulty hard drive; this also needs to be done correctly so that user data is not lost.

Hard drive test in Victoria and how to fix bad sectors (bad blocks).

Friends, if you are reading these lines, it means you have some kind of problem with your hard drive, and how to choose a hard drive was discussed earlier in the article.

When do we think that something wrong is happening with our hard drive?

1. It is impossible to copy the necessary information from a hard drive to another drive; when copying, the operating system freezes and only a reboot can save it.
2. Windows can freeze unexpectedly at any stage of operation.
3. It is impossible to reinstall the operating system, the installation process freezes while unpacking Windows files, or the installer reports the error “The installation cannot continue...”, or Windows takes a very long time to install, for example several hours.
4. When you turn on the computer, the Chkdsk utility immediately starts and checks the hard drive partitions for errors.
5. The hard drive makes strange sounds (clicking, squeaking) and is periodically not detected in the BIOS.
6. Download the Victoria program to work directly in the operating system Windows XP, 7, 8, 10
   Go to the official website of the program and select the version for Windows. I advise you to download the Victoria 4.3 beta version, since Victoria 4.46 beta does not always work correctly.

Victoria for working from a boot disk

We go to the official website of the program and select.

We also need Victoria on the boot disk, but we will consider working with this version second. If you do not have a disk drive, then we will make a bootable USB flash drive with the Victoria program.

So, let's go, firstly, in the Victoria program we will accurately determine the numbers of bad sectors (bad blocks), then we will make a sector-by-sector copy of the hard drive and thereby save the user data, and then we will hide the bad sectors of the bad blocks (remap) in the Victoria program. We will also learn how to do a “Record across the entire clearing” (Erase test), that is, when a bad sector is detected, rewrite the entire block (256 sectors) of the hard drive with zeros.

For example, let's take a real hard drive with bad sectors:

Friends, the minimum unit of information on a hard disk is a sector; the volume of user data is 512 bytes; if the information in a sector cannot be read, then the sector is unreadable or, in other words, faulty. All operating system freezes occur when reading information from such a sector.

This hard drive WDC WD5000AAKS-00A7B2 (500 GB capacity) is really faulty,

The operating system on it constantly freezes and periodically when loading it starts checking the hard drive for errors. The last straw for the owner of the hard drive was that it was impossible to copy important data to another disk, and even reinstalling the operating system ended with yet another hang on unpacking Windows files. Replacing the installation disk with the operating system did not yield anything, and the hang was repeated at another stage of the installation.

That’s when the question arose about what to do with this hard drive, because one of the partitions contained important data and needed to be copied.

Victoria launch:

Launch the Victoria program as administrator. We agree with all warnings about working on a 64-bit system.

Select the initial tab Standard. If we have several hard drives, in the right part of the window, select the desired hard drive with the left mouse, in our case WDC WD5000AAKS-00A7B2

and go to the SMART tab,

press the Get SMART button, the GOOD message will light up to the right of the button and S.M.A.R.T. will open. the hard drive we have selected.

S.M.A.R.T. This screw turned out to be not the best. Why? Read our first article in the series about the Victoria program. Here I will only say that as many as four attributes of S.M.A.R.T. glow red, including the most important parameter, attribute

5 Reallocated Sector Count - (remap), indicating the number of reassigned sectors, this means the spare sectors on the backup tracks are running out and soon there will be nothing to reassign bad sectors with.

Go to the Tests tab.

Hard drive surface test in Victoria program

On the right side of the program window, check the Ignor item and the read item, then click Start. A simple hard drive surface test will run without error correction. This test will not bring any good or bad effects on your hard drive, but when the test is finished, we will know what condition our hard drive is in.

The surface of the hard drive begins to be scanned and after a while bad sectors are detected. After 40 minutes, Victoria gives us the following result:

A lot of good sectors with a good read latency of no more than 5 ms - 3815267

There are also sectors with a bad read delay of 200 ms

There are no sectors with unsatisfactory read latency of more than 600 ms (candidates for bad blocks), but...

What’s really bad is that there are full-fledged bad sectors (bad blocks), the information from which could not be read at all - 13

13 bad sectors (bad blocks), they all start in the area 6630400 and end at 980000000, that is, scattered throughout the hard drive. Bad block numbers must be written down. Friends, it is quite possible that all our problems with the hard drive can be due to these 13 bads and we need to get rid of them, but first we will make a sector-by-sector image of the diseased screw.

The hard drive of the victim WDC WD5000AAKS-00A7B2 (capacity 500 GB) was divided into two partitions: drive D: with the operating system, capacity 120 GB, and drive E: with data, capacity 345 GB.

Before working with the Victoria program, let’s protect ourselves and make a full image of the E drive partition: the volume is 345 GB and we will extract the data from the image. We will create the image in another DMDE program and place it on another physical disk SAMSUNG HD403LJ (400 GB capacity). I will show you how to do this.

Managing my computer's disks

Important data is located on the New Volume (E:) with a capacity of 347 GB of the WDC WD5000AAKS hard drive (total volume 500 GB), which means we will create an image of the partition (E:)

We will create a sector-by-sector image of the partition (E:) on a SAMSUNG HD403LJ hard drive (400 GB capacity), there is only one partition without data on it. New volume (F:)

The third physical disk in the system is an SSD solid state drive (120 GB capacity) drive (C:), it contains our running Windows 8.1 operating system, which is where we are now.

Creating a sector-by-sector image of the entire hard drive or the desired partition in the DMDE program

DMDE is also a very good tool for creating sector-by-sector copies of a faulty hard drive.

We go to the DMDE program website http://dmde.ru/download.html and download the program, click GUI for Windows.

DMDE is downloaded in an archive, unzip it and run the file dmde.exe.

Then select the Russian language.

We accept the terms of the License Agreement. In the initial window of the program, we need to select either a Physical device (that is, a full hard drive) or a partition with data to create an image.

We only need volume E:, so left-click on our WDC WD5000AAKS hard drive, then check Logical drives

and partition (E:), then click OK.

Menu. Create image/clone...

Place for recording, click Disk.

New volume F: and OK. It is necessary that the partition on which the sector-by-sector image of the faulty hard drive (or partition with unreadable data) will be created should be no smaller in volume than this disk.

On the new volume F: all data will be deleted, we agree Yes.

The creation of a sector-by-sector copy of the partition (E:) of the diseased hard drive WDC WD5000AAKS begins on a new volume (F:) of another healthy hard drive of the SAMSUNG HD403LJ drive, which continues for 6 hours (the image is removed from particularly “bad” screws for several days) and freezes completely at 83 percent, after waiting a couple of hours, I clicked the Abort button!

Friends, if we interrupt the creation of the image of a sector-by-sector division at the very end (after all, 83%), then two options await us, as Suvorov used to say - “either the chest in the crosses, or the head in the bushes.”

After interrupting the operation, we go to the New volume F: and see if there is any data on it and... they are there, the DMDE program managed to transfer everything we needed to the F: volume, almost all the data is read without errors. So our case is not complicated and

the bads are mostly software ones

But in some cases, not everything will be so rosy, and when we try to enter a partition with a sector-by-sector copy, we will be greeted with this error: No access to F:\ . The file or folder is damaged. Reading is impossible.

No access to F:\. The file system is not recognized. Make sure that all required system drivers are loaded and that the volume is not damaged.

But even in this case, we will not give up and will do so.

What to do if creating a sector-by-sector image fails?

Friends, the process of creating a sector-by-sector copy does not always end successfully even after several hours, but if you stop creating a sector-by-sector copy, the data in it may become unreadable.

Or, in the process of creating a sector-by-sector copy, the following error will appear: “The request was not completed due to an input/output error on the device” (see screenshot below), indicating that DMDE was unable to read the information in the bad sector (the sector number is indicated in the error) in this case click

Repeat, there will be a second attempt to read information from this sector and it may end in success. If this error with the same sector appears again, then click

Ignore and the creation of a sector-by-sector image will continue, but we will lose information in this sector and, as a result, no file will open in the sector-by-sector copy. If the "The request was not completed due to an I/O error on the device" error appears too often, you can select

Ignore all and all such errors will be skipped, or you can press the button

Parameters and configure the DMDE program accordingly for such a severe case. Click the Options button in this window.

You need to be careful in the parameters, as you can configure a lot of things here. For example, force DMDE to create a sector-by-sector image from a hard drive not from the beginning, but from the end, for this you need to check the box

Reverse the move, sometimes it brings results.

And click Options again.

In this window, check the Don't wait if the device is not ready - Always checkbox. If you select this option, the operation will continue even

in case of an error due to the device not being ready. If you do not check this option, then on some “poor” hard drives a warning will be displayed with the expected user reaction, that is, the image will not be created automatically.

Number of auto retries on CRC error - 0

Number of auto retries if sector not found - 0

Fill bad sectors with hex

Then OK and OK, the creation of the sector-by-sector image begins.

Left click to enlarge image

This setting option also proved to be workable.

Ignore I/O errors - Always

Don't wait if device isn't ready - Always

Number of retries on CRC error - 0

In general, I advise you to study the manual for the DMDE program http://dmde.ru/manual.html or http://dmde.ru/docs/DMDE-manual-ru.pdf, you can also wait for our article on creating a sector-by-sector image of a faulty hard drive with various programs, in it we will even look at creating a bootable flash drive with the DMDE program.

• If DMDE does not help you, then you can try other programs, for example Acronis True Image. Of course, there are still ways in which you can make a sector-by-sector image of a faulty screw, for example, booting from some operating system based on Linux, for example Ubuntu, but I will not describe the process itself here and would rather write a separate article. You can also run the safecopy utility under Linux.
• What to do if you still cannot make a sector-by-sector copy of the hard drive is up to you to decide. You can contact a good and proven data recovery service and specialists will take a sector-by-sector copy of your hard drive using special expensive equipment, for example using the same PC−3000 complex. If you don’t mind your data, then you can take a risk and run algorithms in the Victoria program that rid the surface of your hard drive of bad sectors (bad blocks), how to do this is written below, the hard drive can come back to life after this operation.
• Important: Kazansky (developer of the Victoria program) promises that the most innovative algorithm for hiding bad blocks BB = Advanced REMAP is NOT destructive for data, but in some cases it can be destructive for your files, since even the most advanced Victoria algorithm Advanced REMAP hides defects (remap), this is, in any case, a change in the translation of the screw, which means the loss of user data (details below. I want to say that sometimes it happened that a Victoria hard drive would cure bad problems and you would even be able to copy information from such a hard drive, but unfortunately not All information is readable.

So, in our case, we made a sector-by-sector copy of the diseased hard drive, namely the new volume E: the DMDE program was able to do it, although in some places DMDE froze a little, but everything ended successfully. The sector-by-sector copy of the new volume (E:) is an exact copy and is located on volume F: All existing data is successfully read and copied.

The main problem has been solved and user data has been saved, now we proceed to the hard drive treatment procedure.

How to get rid of bad sectors (bad blocks) using the Victoria program

Friends, let’s now imagine that we were unable to make a sector-by-sector image of a hard drive with bad blocks and we couldn’t come up with anything else and decided to rid our hard drive of bad blocks in the Victoria program, in the hope that after hiding the bad sectors we will be able to read and copy the information to your hard drive.

Note: it is difficult to rid a screw of bad blocks in a running Windows, especially if, for example, you have a laptop with one hard drive and an operating system is installed on the same hard drive and you want to cure the same operating system from bad blocks. In such cases, create a bootable USB flash drive with Victoria, boot the laptop from it and get rid of bad sectors. I propose to create a bootable USB flash drive in the next article, but now we will find out how this is done directly in a running operating system, I will show you everything.

Remap

In the main Victoria window, check the Remap item, which denotes the algorithm for reassigning bad blocks to sectors from backup tracks during the scanning process. Test in Read mode, that is, from beginning to end and click on the Start button.

While the scanning is underway, let's talk about this.

1. What happens with this Remap algorithm? An attempt is made (several times) to force information to be written to the bad sector of the hard drive; if the attempt is successful, then the sector becomes healthy and is removed from the list of bad blocks (remap does not occur). If the write attempt is unsuccessful, then the diseased sector is reassigned to a healthy sector from a hard drive backup track specially designed for such cases.

2. Remap is the reassignment (replacement) of a diseased sector, assigning its LBA number to another physically healthy sector from the reserve track. Information from the sector (at the time of reassignment) hangs in the screw's RAM, and as soon as the sector is reassigned, it is written back.

Remap is basically not destructive for information; if your data is lost, it will only be in one bad sector, but you must admit that the data in the bad block was already unreadable. In the second case, the data will simply be transferred to the sector from the backup track.

Result. As I said, it is difficult to fix anything in a running Windows and Victoria cannot perform a Remap. After 20 minutes, the same result, 13 bad blocks, and you and I will have to make a bootable flash drive with Victoria and work in DOS.

How to scan a specific area on your hard drive in Victoria

If you know the exact addresses of bad sectors, you can set the exact scanning parameters in the Victoria program. For example, we know that our bad blocks start from sector 770,000,000, then in the Start LBA: item, set this number here and the Victoria program will begin scanning and fixing the surface of the hard drive from sector 770,000,000, also, if you set what you need number in the End LBA item: then Victoria will finish scanning in the sector you need.

Erase algorithm

Friends, you can ask me, what will happen if we use the Erase test or is there also Write?

When Erase detects an unreadable sector, it forcibly rewrites the entire block of 256 sectors with zeros (be careful, in some cases your data on the hard drive will be deleted).

• Most often, you come across software (program) bads that are removed most quickly by resetting them - the Erase algorithm, and even if writing to the zero sector is unsuccessful, Remap may well occur, since the hard drive firmware may consider such a sector to be faulty. If Erase does not help, then you can choose Remap, but as we know, the chances that Remap will be performed in a running Windows are low.
• In some cases, software bads can be removed even by simple formatting using Windows itself.

I don’t want to experiment with our WDC WD5000AAKS hard drive, since in the next article I plan to cure it of bad blocks in DOS mode using a bootable flash drive with the Victoria program and still return to the owner the hard drive cured of bad blocks with intact data.

I'll just show you on another hard drive how to run this test in a running Windows.

In the main window of Victoria, select our hard drive and go to the Tests tab, check the Erase item (be careful, in some cases your data on the hard drive will be deleted) - if an unreadable sector is detected, it forcibly rewrites the entire block of 256 sectors with zeros, naturally the information is in the entire block sectors are completely lost, but if an overwrite occurs, the block returns to work (becomes healthy).

Test in Read mode

That is, from beginning to end and click Start.

Often, when “resetting” in a running Windows, the following errors will appear:

Block (bad sector number) try Erase 256 sectors. It was not possible to rewrite the block of sectors.

Write algorithm

The Write mode does not look for any bad sectors, but simply immediately erases all the information on the hard drive by filling all sectors with zeros, this is what repairmen say in the jargon of “Write across the entire clearing”, this algorithm is able to cure a hard drive from bads and simply bad sectors with great read delay, but after such a test it will be impossible to restore data on the hard drive, so first copy all important files to a portable hard drive.

Disk Revival is a program for blocking unstable sectors. The idea of ​​the program is very simple - files are written to these damaged areas. After which you can use the hdd. Since unstable clusters are locked, user documents will only be written to good space. Therefore, the speed of working with disk (ssd, flash) will increase.

Can they be corrected or removed?

This method has limitations. The lock will be reset if:

• do formatting
• delete the folder with the locked files
• defragment the disk using a standard Windows utility. Defragmentation by others is possible if it allows you to add the folder with blocked files to the exception

Unstable sectors or bad blocks are areas of the hard drive that the controller has difficulty reading. Problems can be caused by physical wear of the HDD or software errors. The presence of too many unstable sectors can lead to freezes and malfunctions of the operating system. You can fix the problem using special software.

The presence of a certain percentage of bad blocks is a normal situation. Especially when the hard drive has been in use for more than a year. But if this indicator exceeds the norm, you can try to block or restore some of the unstable sectors.

Method 1: Victoria

If a sector was designated as unstable due to a mismatch between the information recorded in it and the checksum (for example, due to a write failure), then such a section can be restored by overwriting the data. This can be done using the Victoria program.

For this:

1. Run the built-in SMART test to determine the overall percentage of bad sectors.
2. Select one of the available recovery modes (Remap, Restore, Erase) and wait until the procedure is completed.

The software is suitable for programmatic analysis of physical and logical disks. Can be used to repair bad or unstable sectors.

Method 2: Built-in Windows Tools

You can check and restore some of the bad sectors using the utility built into Windows "Check Disk". Procedure:

After this, the analysis of the disk will begin, if possible, restoring some sectors by rewriting them. An error may appear during the process, which means that the percentage of unstable areas is probably too large and there are no more backup patch blocks. In this case, the best solution would be to purchase a new hard drive.

If, after analyzing the hard drive using special software, the program reveals too large a percentage of bad or unstable sectors, then the easiest way is to replace the faulty HDD. Other recommendations:

1. When a hard drive has been in use for a long time, the magnetic head has most likely become unusable. Therefore, the restoration of even some sectors will not correct the situation. It is recommended to replace the HDD.
2. After damage to the hard drive and an increase in the bad sectors indicator, user data often disappears - you can restore it using special software.
3. It is not recommended to use faulty HDDs to store important information or install an operating system on them. They are unstable and can only be installed on a computer as spare devices after a preliminary remap with special software (reassigning the addresses of bad blocks to spare ones).

To prevent your hard drive from failing prematurely, try to periodically check it for errors and defragment it in a timely manner.

You can cure some unstable sectors on your hard drive using standard Windows tools or special software. If the percentage of broken areas is too large, then replace the HDD. If necessary, you can restore some of the information from a faulty disk using special software.

As you know, any hardware installed in computers is subject to aging or wear. And they are no exception. Despite the apparent problems of a physical nature, quite often you can encounter some types of software failures, as a result of which so-called uncorrectable sector errors appear on disks (CrystalDiskInfo - a utility for testing HDDs - marks them in the ID list, assigning the value “C6”). Even when conducting a series of tests on the surface of the hard drive, errors can be attributed specifically to physical damage, although in fact this is not the case. Simply, if it is impossible to record or test such areas, programs mark them as faulty. However, such problems can be corrected, of course, only on the condition that the hard drive has not really begun to “crumble” or has not been subjected to physical impact (shocks, falls, dust and moisture, overheating, etc.).

What are Uncorrectable Hard Drive Sector Errors?

To begin with, we should provide some theoretical information about possible situations associated with the occurrence of such equipment malfunctions. We will not consider the physical nature of the appearance of uncorrectable sector errors on hard drives for now, but will focus on understanding how such failures are recognized and interpreted by verification tools. In principle, if we do not take into account surface damage, it can be argued that all major failures are associated with violations of the logical structure of hard drives, called the file system. Indeed, check programs identify bad areas with BAD sectors and issue error notifications only because they cannot read them. As is probably already clear, this may not necessarily be physical damage to the plates. Most often, this situation can occur, say, when there is a sudden power outage or an incorrect shutdown of the computer.

A little theory about bad sectors

As for the uncorrectable sector errors on the disk themselves, there should be no particular reason for panic when they are identified. But here you need to make a difference between unstable sectors and supposedly fatal errors.

As already mentioned, in the above application the second parameter corresponds to “C6”. But the first ones are marked as “C5”. If only the second value increases with increasing quantity, it is not a fact that the hard drive has begun to “crumble.” If the value of the “C6” parameter or both increases at the same time, it is necessary to urgently take action and first try to at least create backup copies of the necessary files or, if possible, copy them to removable media.

In addition, it is worth paying attention to the fact that many hard drive manufacturers, in order to avoid such situations, create special reserve areas on hard drives in advance. When uncorrectable sector errors are detected on a hard disk, the treatment consists of reassigning the address of the bad memory cell, assigning it one of the reserved values.

Symptoms of HDD errors

But not all users monitor the condition of their hard drive and regularly check it for errors. In most cases, active actions are taken already in the most extreme situations. Therefore, you should initially pay attention to the operation of the HDD. But how can you identify that there may be errors and failures on the disk?

Most often, the presence of malfunctions can be determined by constant freezing or decreased performance, by the appearance of frequent spontaneous reboots and the appearance of blue screens of death, by the inability to boot when turning on or restarting the computer, etc.

The simplest check of an inactive logical partition

Now let's look at the main methods for eliminating problems that have arisen. The most primitive solution is to check for unstable sectors and uncorrectable sector errors in relation to logical partitions, since they are not virtual, but are created on the main media (only in a different area of ​​the disk).

To do this, you can use the standard disk check, called from the properties section in Explorer. In the seventh version of Windows and below, you must manually specify automatic correction of bad sectors or conduct a surface test. This is not required in higher versions.

How to check the system partition?

As for the system partition, everything is not so simple. It will not be possible to detect irreparable sector errors using the above method (the system will simply issue a notification that scanning the currently active volume is impossible). However, as an additional notification, you may be prompted to perform a scan the next time you turn on the computer. It is advisable to agree with this and reboot. Upon restart, testing will be activated without user intervention. But you can also perform the check without rebooting.

To do this, you will need to call the command line (required as an administrator) and set the command chkdsk /x/f/r in it, in which the “/x” attribute is responsible for preliminary disabling the active volume, and the other two are intended for finding and eliminating critical errors and failures to restore damaged sectors. Again, if the check turns out to be impossible and you are asked to perform it at restart, you should agree.

How to fix uncorrectable sector errors in Victoria HDD?

However, the system’s own tools, as is rightly believed, are far from perfect, therefore, to obtain the most effective result, you should use third-party software products, among which the leader (recognized by all experts) is the Victoria HDD application, which can work both under Windows and in DOS - mode, which is more preferable.

In the utility itself, the search for uncorrectable sector errors, as well as unstable areas, is based on four tests:

• Ignore (preliminary check for the presence of failed or ignored sectors when reading);
• Remap (address reassignment for identified cells);
• Erase (erasing faulty addresses of damaged sectors or resetting them to zero);
• Restore (recovery).

Note: The zeroing test should only be used in the most extreme cases, as further writing to such sectors will subsequently be impossible.

It goes without saying that you can use other software products like Ashampoo HDD Control, HDDScan, Data LifeGuard Diagnostic and others. But the first program above is by far the best (this is not discussed).

Restoring a hard drive: is it possible?

Finally, questions related to hard drive recovery seem completely natural, but not using physical repairs, but using software methods. Until recently, these did not exist. However, with the advent of a small program called HDD Regenerator, everything changed.

It is believed that this particular utility is capable of performing the so-called magnetization reversal of the surface of a hard drive, which allows you to restore not only the functionality of the HDD, but also all the information stored on it. Of course, skeptics regarding its use cite many counterarguments, however, this does not prevent many from using it and, I must say, quite successfully. The application runs exclusively in DOS mode and has only an English-language interface (these are the two main disadvantages of the program). On the other hand, in a Windows environment, running a hard drive scan is generally not recommended at all, and on the other hand, even with minimal knowledge of English, it won’t be particularly difficult to understand the utility (especially since basically all operations are as automated as possible).

Finally, if all else fails, you can try to perform low-level formatting using the HDD Low Level Format program, but this will destroy absolutely all the data, and you will have to install the operating system again, although if the hard drive really begins to “crumble,” there is little point in this .

What's the result?

As can be concluded from all of the above, even damage to the surface is not a particular problem, since modern computer technology has reached the level where restoring a hard drive is completely elementary. As for the preferred tools, of course, it is best to give preference to the Victoria HDD program (if there are software glitches). If its application when the hard drive is not working does not give any results, then nothing other than the HDD Regenerator application will help (and that depends on how serious the identified problems turn out to be).