Hello,

a friend of mine said that being rough when handling a laptop with a HDD is the main cause for causing bad sectors. Is that true?

I tought it was less dependant on handling and more on the drive itself and all the other surrounding factors.

Thank you.

i get a lot of laptop drives for recovery- often with client admitting they dropped it. Hard drives do not like being bumped while operating. I see it in servers with server grade drives also where I know the client 'carefully moved' the stations where all the drives failed with bad sectors prematurely. Personally I use ssd in all my laptops to resist rough handling.

Rough handling can certainly lead to bad sectors. Read/write heads glide on a cusion of air just a few microns above the platter surface. If the heads bump the platters even slightly it'll damage the surface leading to bad sectors and possibly damage the heads.

However the platter surface material also can degrade over time and lose it's ability to reliably retain data also leading to bad sectors. So it's hard to know for sure what's caused the bad sectors.

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Data Medics - Hard Drive, SSD, and RAID Data Recovery Service Company

I can't understand how hard drives can be specified for use in environments that are subject to extreme shock and vibration, eg cars and iPods. It seems counterintuitive to me.

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

Sure, counterintuitive to you. But highly productive to the bean counters and marketing departments. They don't always have your best interest in mind. And they put hard drives where they shouldn't.

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On a clear disk you can seek forever.

I think following could be the reasons --


1) Consumer grade hard disk used in Business environment
2) Low grade SMPS
3) Manufacturing defects / Firmware Bugs
4) Overheating
5) Wear & tear of precision components
6) Exceeding manufacturer specified usage

Maybe since manufacturers found out that there were shock sensors in the drive, they thought they were unbreakable

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Web: https://www.day1data.de

A bad sector on a hard drive is a small cluster of storage space that does not respond to read or write requests. Bad Sectors occur due to physical damage or due to software errors.

Bad sectors can be due to
Wear & Tear
manufacturing defect
software error
Firmware issue

The reality of bad sectors brings home a chilling fact — even if your hard drive is otherwise working properly, it’s possible for a bad sector to develop and corrupt some of your data. This is another reason why you should always back up your data — multiple copies are the only thing that will prevent bad sectors and other issues from ruining your hard drive’s data

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Regular Backup Means a Lot