My Crucial® SSD has Bad Sectors

My Crucial SSD has a lot of bad sectors. Do I need to replace it?

With a traditional hard drive bad sectors can forecast a failure, but due to the nature of flash technology it's normal to have a small number of bad sectors on an SSD. As long as the number of bad sectors does not change, there is no reason for concern; firmware on the SSD tracks bad sectors and marks them as unusable, so even though bad sectors are present on the drive, reliability is unaffected and data is never written to them.

The easiest way to keep track of the number of bad sectors on an SSD is to run ChkDsk (short for "check disk") in Windows®. After checking the drive, ChkDsk will report the number of bad sectors it found. Make a note of what that number is and run ChkDsk again after a couple of days. You may also monitor the health your SSD by using Storage Executive. Storage Executive is a free downloadable tool that allows you to monitor your drive's overall health.

If the number of bad sectors remains the same, all is well. If the number of bad sectors is steadily increasing over time, contact customer service for your region to receive further assistance.

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