How can I fix bad sectors in my hard drive - Seagate (ST3160827AS) 160 GB Hard Drive

BAD SECTORS
When a hard drive has bad read/write sectors it means the magnetic oxide layer on the disc platters are failing. Before you made an image of the hard drive you should have ran Error Check on the C Drive. This checks and locates the bad sectors and moves the data to an undamaged part of the disc platters and then locks out that bad sector so data cannot be written on the bad sector.
I recommend you do a fresh Windows install on your new hard drive to fix this problem and install the laptop's device drivers plus your programs and data before the hard disk fails completely.

There is no way to fix a bad sector. A bad sector is like a scratch on a cd that can't be fixed. You should run a program like "HD Tune", when you use a program what it does is it will read the disk and when it can't read a certain spot it marks it as a bad sector. After that the hard drive will move the data from the bad sector to a spare area of the hard drive. The spare area will store the data from a bad sector and will be usable like the old one. However if you get too many bad sectors you will run out of spares. When that happens your drive will crash.

You Can Try These Steps: Windows comes with a built-in hard disk utility software that scans your hard disk for errors and attempts to fix them.

1. On My Computer, select the disk drive that you want to diagnose and repair.
2. Right click on it and select Properties
3. Go to Tools tab.
4. Click on the "Check Now" button under "Error Checking Status".
5. Depending up on your choice, choose either "Automatically fix file system errors" or "Scan for and Attempt Recovery of Bad Sectors."
6. Then click on Start.

You can run ChkDisk utility to fix Bad sectors on the hard drive(If its fixable).
This utility actually marks the bad sectors on the Hard drive and Isolate from the being accessed thats why 33% of HDD space is unreadable.(Which is very high)
There is no option to fix this HDD, so suggest you to replace it with a new one.
Hope this helps Let me know if you have any query on this.

These sectors can be fixed.

1. For Windows
   • 1 Double-click on My Computer to open the My Computer window.
     
   • 2 Select the disk that you want to diagnose and repair.
     
   • 3 Choose Properties from the File menu. You should see the Properties window for the drive that you selected.
     
   • 4 Choose the Tools tab.
     
   • 5 Click the Check Now button under Error Checking Status.
     
   • 6 Depending on your version of Windows, choose either "Thorough" or "Scan for and Attempt Recovery of Bad Sectors."
     
   • 7 Click on Start.
     

Read more: How to Fix Bad Sectors on a Hard Disk ' eHow.com http://www.ehow.com/how_113636_fix-sectors-hardfix-sectors-hard.html#ixzz1PeS42ET5

you could run the check disk utility
click start run type cmd then type chkdsk/r/f which will scan for and attempt to repair any bad sectors and automatically fix any corrupt files on your hard drive then defragment your hard drive or
go to control panel administrive tools computer management you can right click on the drive select properties tools check now?tick in both boxes to scan for and attempt to repair/recover any bad sectors and automaticall fix any corrupt files
in xp
hope this helps

click start run type cmd then type chkdsk/r/f which will fix bad sectors and automatically fix any corrupt files on your hard drive then defragment your hard drive
hope this helps

When a hard disk has bad sectors, these sectors can be fixed by running check disk. This is a temporary fix as the hard disk is nearly worn out and it will get more bad sectors and evenually the hard disk will fail completely.
Bad sectors occur when the magnetic oxide on the disk platters is worn out and data cannot be written or read from these sectors.
To run check disk click Start - My Computer - right click on C Drive and click on Properties - click on Tools tab - then Check Now in Error Checking
I suggest once this has been done, you back up your data and purchase a new hard disk ready to install Windows etc. when the hard disk fails completely. You may want to install a new hard drive before the old hard drive fails completely.

There is nothing you can do about bad sectors. The Hard Drive itself, with its associated electronics, automatically maps these bad sectors and doesn't use them any more. So, the answer to your question is "NOTHING". Bad sectors may eventually make your Hard Drive unusable, and if your bad sector count is growing quickly it's time to do a complete backup and replace the drive.

Bad sectors ona drive is normal. The modern High capacity drives actually have more capacity than they tell you so that when bad sectors appear they swwap them out for good ones. So I would not worry about it, unless there are lots. How did you discover the bad sectors?

Go to http://www.grc.com and download spinrite. That will have a good go at fixing the bad sectors.

bad sectors are not fixable as far as hard drives go.
you mmight find software that claims ti fix bad sectors but the claim is false as they only temporarily overwrite the sectors and unmark the bad and remark to good but the problem remains to be the sectors are bad.
The best thing to do is to replace the hard drive with a good used one or a new one.

Sorry but as a technician I know what bad sectors are and what happens when you get them.