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Windows Surface Scanner: check for bad sectors on your hard disk

November 18, 2009 By 17 Comments

Windows Surface Scanner is a free, fast utility that scans your hard drive(s) for physical errors. It will examine each sector on your hard drive for read errors and reports them if found. It is purely diagnostic and will not fix or “mark” bad sectors or recover data.

It happened to me a couple of weeks ago: my computer started acting flaky and unreliable, taking an unreasonably long time to boot (and sometimes failing do so), and driving me nuts in the process. In these situations most people I (believe), start wondering if they’ve contracted a virus or other malware, or puzzling over whether a recently added software might have caused the matter.

All of these are plausible avenues of exploration, but if nothing seems to work you should check to see if your hard drive might have bad sectors on it that may be causing the problem. This is what Surface Scanner does and performs the job quite rapidly.

Surface Scanner vs. Windows’ check disk tool: the main reason why you would use this is for a quick diagnosis – it is considerably faster than Windows’ built in checker and the scan can be performed from within Windows without a reboot. However, it does not have a “repair” bad sectors option which the Windows utility offers.

A couple of quick notes:

  • How to use: install then run; mount the hard drive you want to check then press “scan”. This can be done from within Windows, no need to reboot.
  • Fast: it took about 10 minutes to scan my 5400 rpm 80-gig drive.
  • If you encounter many errors: then stop the scan; you now have the information you need, and forcing the scan might further damage the drive and decrease the chances of salvaging your data.

The verdict: the scan is fast enough that its worth doing every once in a while if your system is acting weird, seeming to work fine in one instance and hanging up the next.

If you do find bad sectors: the first thing I would do is get my data out of there ASAP. Next you might try to run software that will attempt to apply fixes to the problem. Windows’ own check disk seems to have an option to do that. I am not sure if there are any good freeware tools that will attempt to fix bad sectors … if you know of any let me know in the comments. In any case fix or no fix if you have bad sectors you should start planning to replace the drive immediately. (Oh, and in the case I described above my hard drive turned out fine, to my relief!).

Version Tested: 1.0

Compatibility: WinAll.

Go to the program home page to download the latest version (approx 1.78 megs).


 
 
 
Samer Kurdi

Samer Kurdi

Has been reviewing software since 2006 when he started Freewaregenius.com
Samer Kurdi

@freewaregenius

November 18, 2009
Samer Kurdi
17
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  • Toni

    HD Tune (Pro & Free) displays the SMART status and can also do an error scan.

    My system drive has about ten reallocated sectors since two years (SMART: OK), so I guess a bad sector does not mean to replace the drive ASAP, but rather to check the status of your drive more often to see, if the numbers of bad sectors increase.

  • José Mª

    I have downloadaded and installed the programme with the nasty surprise that there was a virus in it. Luckily my anti virus detected and I completely removed it.
    I am a follower of freeware genius for many months now and these things should not happen because all the marvelous work you have been putting in this blog might go down the drain if we, the readers, can not trust in downloading any suggested programme you may present.
    Another negative comment – sorry, it is the first time I write and I seem not to be content but it is exactly the opposite – about the adjective with the WSS. Fast? Probably it is fast in comparison with the programme included in XP but it took well over an hour to scan a 230GB.
    Letting aside my comments, please receive my congratulations on your blog. Do not give up.
    Thanks

    • Samer

      Jose,
      I am 100% sure that there is no virus. What we have here is a instance of a false positive.

      I run a host of the best antivirus/antispyware programs on my machine and none gave me any such indication. I also uploaded the file to virustotal.com, which checks a file against 41 of the most well known anti virus and anti malware engine, and it came back with what I consider a clear bill of health (4/41, which is an excellent result; 4 second-tier engines reported some sort of trojan, while NONE of the leading engines found anything).

      Here’s the URL: http://www.virustotal.com/analisis/07cc2a77a0b607300c71e433f5a8ff0d7820c63b3cccc1f58420ed042d6cfbbd-1258591862

      As for stating that it is fast in comparison with the utility included in Windows, that is indeed exactly what I meant.

      Oh, and thanks for your kind word regarding my blog!

  • Chris

    I agree with your advice to get your data out ASAP. Bad sectors are bad sectors. They are physically damaged and while data might be recovered from them, they could never be trusted again.

    A couple of fantastic tools for data recovery are TestDisk and PhotoRec from CGSecurity. I once scored major points with my boss who accidentally formatted a drive because he got mixed up on the drive letters. TestDisk recovered the partition data and restored the drive in a minute or two. I’ve also successfully used PhotoRec to get images off of a card that was mistakenly formatted in my Wife’s camera.

    Strictly DOS interface, not flashy or super friendly, but VERY effective and worth your time. http://www.cgsecurity.org/

    So, lesson here is, once you get your data off the drive safely, replace the disk ASAP. As inexpensive as storage has become these days, it’s much better than taking chances with your valuable data.

    Awesome site Samer! Keep up the good work!

  • Bytes

    José Mª, since you are probably run Asquared which is among the worst when it comes to false positives you should read this http://blog.nirsoft.net/2009/05/17/antivirus-companies-cause-a-big-headache-to-small-developers/

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  • http://none Aaron

    Attempted to download and my SonicWall blocked it with an alert that it contains the trojan Avenger.gen

    Tried it again at home and Symantec Endpoint Protection also threw an alert.

    Do not download.

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  • http://www.dtidata.com Michael Stankard

    As the publisher of this program I can assure everyone that there are no viruses in it. We host all our software on secure Linux servers and run constant checks to insure the safety of our users. Our downloads are approved by softpedia.com as safe. If anybody needs help in getting the software feel free to email me or call us at 727-251-2058

    michael at dtidata.com

  • Vicky

    Well well well all this is to do with data security or hard drive security.Well am tired of my hard drive crashing.I tried out data recovery but it was too expensive.Well some weeks ago,i was looking for an online backup system and i came across one called safecopy online backup.I was suprised that with safecopy,they only pay 50bucks annually for 200GB and lots more and they also offer a free unlimited 5GB.This is so owesome.Well i opted for safecopy and now i sleep with my minds at rest knowing that all my files are safe.