Which term describes a physical damage on the disk that can cause unreadable sectors?

• A. Bad sector
• B. Fragment
• C. Spare sector
• D. Cache error

Answer: (A)

A bad sector is a physically damaged area of the disk surface that cannot be read reliably, which can lead to unreadable sectors. The disk’s firmware often remaps these damaged sectors to spare ones, but they still appear as unreadable when accessing data stored there.

Fragment refers to file data being split across non-contiguous locations, not a physical defect. A spare sector is a replacement sector used to replace a bad one, not the defect itself. A cache error involves issues with the disk’s cache memory, not the disk surface.