Encountering current pending sector count? The parameter indicates the number of unstable sectors on a hard drive or SSD that are yet to be remapped or reallocated. This post answers all of these questions in regarding to what current pending sector count is and how to fit it.
About Current Pending Sector Count
Current Pending Sector Count is a S.M.A.R.T parameter that shows the current count of unstable sectors on your disk that are waiting to be remapped. It briefly indicates imminent drive failure and requires urgent backup & recovery followed by hard drive or SSD replacement.
CrystalDiskInfo is a tool that is used to monitor the hard drive and show the health status of the hard drive. If your hard drive is unhealthy, you may receive the Current Pending Sector Count caution.
If you receive Current Pending Sector Count caution, what you immediately need do is to keep the data on the hard drive safe.
How to Keep Data Safe When Coming Across Current Pending Sector Count?
To avoid data loss due to hard drive failure or the increasing current pending sector count, you need back up files immediately. In this way, you don’t worry that the increasing current pending sectors would lead to hard drive failure and data loss.
If you don’t know how to back up files on the hard drive, continue your reading. The following part shows you the step-by-step guide on backing up files.
To back up files on the hard drive, the professional backup software – MiniTool ShadowMaker is strongly recommended. MiniTool ShadowMaker is designed to back up the operating system, files, folders, partitions, and disks.
To learn how to keep your data safe with MiniTool ShadowMaker, check out the post.
Besides backing up files or hard drive to keep data safe, if there are a lot of files on the hard drive, you can also choose to clone the whole hard drive to another one. The Disk Clone feature of MiniTool ShadowMaker plays an important role.
How to Fix or Decrease Current Pending Sector Count?
In this part, I will walk you through some Current Pending Sector Count fixes. If you receive Current Pending Sector Count caution, try these fixes.
Method 1. Run Chkdsk Command
The first way you can try is to run chkdsk command. The chkdsk command can inspect all sectors on the hard drive for the read/write operations. If some sectors don’t respond to the request made by scan, the chkdsk command can mark them as bad sectors and reallocate them. So, this way may help to fix or decrease the Current Pending Sector Count.
Now, we will show you the detailed operations.
Step 1: Open Command Prompt
- Type Command Prompt in the search box of Windows and choose the best-matched one.
- Right-click it to choose Run as administrator.
Step 2: Type the command
- In the pop-up window, type the command chkdsk /r /f X: and hit Enter to continue. The X represents the drive letter.
- Then type Y to continue.
When the process is finished, you can run CrystalDiskInfo tool again to check whether you have fixed the Current Pending Sector Count or the value data is declined.
Method 2. Perform Full Format or Wipe Drive
It is likely that the drive may misread the information on the sector count. In this situation, you can choose to force the drive to re-read these pending sectors to lower the sector count value. In this way, you need to full format the hard drive or wipe the hard drive.
Way 1. Perform Full Format
Step 1: Open Disk Management
- Press Windows and R key together to open Run dialog.
- Then type msc in the box and click OK to continue.
Step 2. Perform full format
- In the Disk Management window, select the drive you want to erase and choose Format… to continue.
- In the pop-up window, set some partition parameters and uncheck the option Perform a quick format and click OK to continue.
When the process is finished, you can reboot your computer and run CrystalDiskInfo tool to check whether you have fixed or decreased the Current Pending Sector Count value.
Way 2. Wipe a Hard Drive
Besides the above way to secure-erase a hard drive or partition, you can also choose to wipe the partition or hard drive.
To wipe a hard drive, the free partition management tool – MiniTool Partition Wizard is recommended. It can help you to wipe a hard drive with ease.
Solution 3. Replace Hard Drive
If your hard drive is still under warranty, you can consider contacting the manufacturer for a hard drive replacement.
Before replacing hard drive, please back up your files firstly
So, in the above part, we have introduced 3 ways to fix or decrease Current Pending Sector Count value.
How to Recover Data If Hard Drive Is Failed?
As I have mentioned in the above part, the Current Pending Sector Count caution indicates the imminent hard drive failure and the abnormal Current Pending Sector Count value is a sign of hard drive failure.
What can you do if you unfortunately come across hard drive failure due to the abnormal Current Pending Sector Count value? As a matter of fact, if a hard drive is failed, to recover data is the most important thing especially when you have not backed up before.
To recover data, you can take advantage of professional data recovery software. Thus, MiniTool Partition Wizard Pro Ultimate is strongly recommended. It can help to recover various types of files such as Word documents, excels, photos, PDF files, etc.
To sum up, this post has introduced what the Current Pending Sector Count is and what you should do when encountering Current Pending Sector Count caution.
News From
MiniTool Solution Category: Data Recovery Services Profile: MiniTool Solution Ltd. is a software development company based in Canada. As a dedicated software development company, MiniTool Solution Ltd. provides customers with complete business software solutions in the data recovery and partition management industry.
