There are two types of bad sectors \u2014 often divided into \u201cphysical\u201d and \u201clogical\u201d bad sectors or \u201chard\u201d and \u201csoft\u201d bad sectors.<\/p>\n
A physical \u2014 or hard \u2014 bad sector is a cluster of storage on the hard drive that\u2019s physically damaged. The hard drive\u2019s head may have touched that part of the hard drive and damaged it, some dust may have settled on that sector and ruined it, a solid-state drive\u2019s flash memory cell may have worn out, or the hard drive may have had other defects or wear issues that caused the sector to become physically damaged. This type of sector cannot be repaired.<\/p>\n
A logical \u2014 or soft \u2014 bad sector is a cluster of storage on the hard drive that appears to not be working properly. The operating system may have tried to read data on the hard drive from this sector and found that the error-correcting code (ECC) didn\u2019t match the contents of the sector, which suggests that something is wrong. These may be marked as bad sectors, but can be repaired by overwriting the drive with zeros \u2014 or, in the old days, performing a low-level format. Windows\u2019 Disk Check tool can also repair such bad sectors.<\/p>\n