Hard disk should be the most subtle components in the computer. As modern technology is advancing rapidly, hard disk capacity has been increased greatly. But its brittle shortcoming is not still improved radically. For computer users, it is the last thing for them to find hard disk broken, since it restores precious data and information.

As hard disk problems are divided mainly into two aspects—logical and physical bad tracks. If it is logical problem, you can reinstall software under the worst circumstance. And for physical one, you can still handle it on condition that the problems are not so serious.

First of all, let us see what will happen if there is physical damage in the hard disk.
When reading certain file or running programs, it is easy to go awry or takes long time to operate successfully. Even when reading, hard disk is creaking hoarsely. If this happens, you have to aware that certain sectors with data have been broken already.

When booting computer, system can not be lead by hard disk. After starting floppy disk, it can switch to hard disk drive letter but cannot enter into it. Even by using SYS order, it still fails. All of these are probably caused by the problem in hard disk sectors. It is more serious than the previous one. Besides, computer is always troubled with blue screen without any specific reason even though you use it correctly.

According to the situation mentioned above, there are some ways to remedy. Here are some methods to repair hard disk bad tracks. You should take these measures orderly.

First of all, it is wise for you from the easiest way. In Windows98 system, you can right-click drive letter and choose “Properties”. In the “Tool” tab, you can choose to scan the disk thoroughly and automatically restore the probable broken cluster.

To be frankly, the first methods can not work very well every time, because Windows98 just repair the logical bad tracks but not physical ones. Therefore, you should consider perform “Cold Treatment” to these bad tracks. So-called “Cold Treatment” is to mark those tracks and do not use them any more. You should remember their positions and perform high-level formatting. By doing these, those tracks can be arranged in certain area and computer may not restore any file there. Do not decide such area too small in order to save hard disk space. Because bad tracks can extend to other good ones, it is wise for you to leave proper space for those broken tracks in case of new bad tracks happen. Or you can use certain specific software to help you.

In the last resort, you can do low-level formatting to hard disk. This should be the last measure to take because it can harm disks in two aspects at least: one is to abrade disk; another is to accelerate the extension of bad tracks.

Last but not least, if there is any bad track, you should review whether you defragment disk too frequently or there is too low memory so that the applications have to visit disks hourly.

All of the methods mentioned above can solve hard disk physical bad tracks problems correctly but passively, because it expenses the disk capacity. So, the best way is to operate hard disk cautiously.