Hardware⏱️ 3 min read📅 2026-06-15

How to Fix: Hard drive physical read error, how to find out which files affected?

Hard drive physical read error and file recovery from backup.

Quick Answer: Use HDDRawCopy's error log to identify affected files, then restore them from your backup.

A hard drive physical read error can be frustrating and affect data recovery. This issue typically occurs when a hard drive is experiencing mechanical failure or has bad sectors, causing data corruption. In this case, you're cloning your HDD to a new drive using HDDRawCopy, which has resulted in several read errors.

To find out which files are affected by these read errors and restore them from backup, follow the steps below.

⚠️ Common Causes

  • The primary reason for hard drive physical read errors is mechanical failure or bad sectors. When a hard drive's mechanical components fail, it can cause data corruption and lead to read errors.
  • Another possible cause is wear and tear on the hard drive's platters, heads, or other internal components.

🔧 Proven Troubleshooting Steps

Analyzing Read Errors with HDDRawCopy

  1. Step 1: Open the HDDRawCopy interface and navigate to the 'Error Log' section. This will display a list of read errors that occurred during the cloning process.
  2. Step 2: Sort the error log by 'Offset' in ascending order, which should help you identify files or directories with the most frequent read errors.
  3. Step 3: Use the 'Search' function to filter the error log by specific file names or directory paths. This will narrow down the list of affected files.

Using Disk Utility to Map Read Errors

  1. Step 1: Open Disk Utility on your Mac and select the cloned drive from the left sidebar.
  2. Step 2: Click on 'First Aid' in the top menu bar and select 'Run' to start the disk repair process. This will attempt to identify and fix bad sectors on the drive.

🎯 Final Words

Once you've identified the files or directories affected by read errors, you can restore them from your backup using the original drive's data. If you're unable to recover specific files due to severe corruption, consider seeking professional help from a data recovery service.

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