Physical Sector Damage

Overview

A sector is the fundamental unit in a disk type media where the information usually gets stored. It is analogous to shelves of a big cupboard which have a pre defined capacity to store things. Similarly hard disks have innumerous equal sectors crafted on them with definite storage capacity. Thus the memory of any disk is attributed to the number of sectors it has. A 40GB hard disk will have as many as 80 million sectors over it. A minutest unreadable sector can corrupt the whole database. Damage to these sectors must be avoided to keep the hard drive efficacious.




There are various factors which may lead to sector damage. These comprise of; sector damage due to technical malfunctioning of the system, physical sector damage etc. Here we will examine pros and cons of physical sector damage and some effective ways to minimize these damages.

Prominent causes of Physical Sector Damage

A majority of the sector damages are attributed to improper physical conditions. Physically perturbed sector may substantially abate the efficiency of the hard drive. Let us have an insight to some of the most common physical disturbances:

• Physical alterations on the surface of hard drive are mainly caused by the continuous back and forth movement of head along the platters of the disk. This movement severely fragments the disk attenuating its working capacity. This phenomenon is termed as “Head Bounce”.
• Another major factor responsible for disk fragmentation is “Media Degradation”, according to which prolonged use of disk actually resulted into deterioration in quality of its media. The material of the disk no longer remains apt for the further usage and gets defunct within a short span.
• Improper handling and placement is also one of the factors contributing to sector damage. Users generally get careless in handling the disks and let there hard drives exposed to external particles like dust. This exposure diminishes the quality of media to a greater extent making it unsuitable for further usage.
• One big reason for physical sector damage is “heat”. Due to extended contact between head and the drive, heat is generated due to friction. As hard drives are extremely heat sensitive, they tend to get damaged over a period of time.