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Minor inconsistencies - The only constant is change


XPerceniol

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So ..

Here I go again.

Could (would) anybody recommend any program I could try to investigate bad sectors on my hard drive so I may be able to isolate them into their own partition? I realized my hard drive is failing but looking to squeeze out a little more time out of it if I can.

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

EDIT: I guess what I'm trying to say, is, if possible, I'd like to find out exactly where the bad sectors are so I can create partitions around them (so to speak). As I've said, I've run computers with bad sectors and eventually they spread and as I understand (or misunderstand) it, chkdsk marks them so nothing can be written to them. I've been running it 2 times a week and still get many errors. 

 

Edited by XPerceniol
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@XPerceniol , if you want these bad sectors to be marked as non-writable , you need to wipe out the HDD with the full format option , not just "quick" . This is the simpliest way , do not forget to backup your data first ! But I strongly suggest to replace the HDD ,  a huge chance that it will gain new bad sectors anyways .

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Thank you @Dixel and @dmiranda.

I did download that program, so thank you for that recommendation.

Whats funny, is, HDDSCAN S.M.A.R.T gives it a green light even with the bad sectors and the standard (quick) scan goes through fine, but the long scan won't even complete at all, it locks up at 46%. Where, I crystal gives it a yellow caution warning.

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I actually didn't know a full format would do that, so I'll consider doing that perhaps this week. I have several medical appointments and hopefully will have the time. Good thing this is a legit installation and I'm holding the recovery DVD and key :) So I'll just let it format and (hopefully) then use Acronis to restore my (current) installation - hopefully it will work that way. Quite truthfully, I am backed up very well and have not even a single thing on my drive of any importance/value to me. Just the OS - the browsers - and an few recording music programs. Al my (on-demand) antivirus applications. I learned to not store anything that is personal on a hard drive.

But yeah, I realize I'm on 'borrowed time' with this and I'm surprised with all the brown outs here, it didn't quit on me already. I'm unsure if its worth it since this thing is likely held together with the dust and dirt and things are rusted in place. Lol!

We'll see, I guess.

Thanks again for your advice.

 

Edited by XPerceniol
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3 hours ago, XPerceniol said:

Thanks again for your advice.

You're very welcome , yes , the full option will remap the sectors , I have a similar HDD (but bigger) and performed this procedure on it , it's also a Seagate one.  I strongly suggest to get rid of Seagate , once and for all. They usually love to develop bad sectors. I use it only for non-important data since , even though the sectors were successfully remapped , all of them.

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I recommend what @Dixelrecommend. I have been cleared smart alert on some disks. Sometimes bad blocks are not remapped by controller when should be

1 hour ago, Dixel said:

I strongly suggest to get rid of Seagate , once and for all. They usually love to develop bad sectors. I use it only for non-important data since , even though the sectors were successfully remapped , all of them.

i recommend same too. I generally had bad experience with seagates. WD blue (7200rpm 1tb model with idle parking off) and wd black never let me down. Funny that my 20gb seagates from early 2000 got zero issues while had plenty of issues with newer ones

Edited by Mr.Scienceman2000
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11 hours ago, XPerceniol said:

Could (would) anybody recommend any program I could try to investigate bad sectors on my hard drive so I may be able to isolate them into their own partition? I realized my hard drive is failing but looking to squeeze out a little more time out of it if I can.

HD Sentinel, Victoria, MHDD

No need to format the whole drive when you can just rewrite the sectors to trigger remapping.

Repeat the scan to ensure all bad sectors have been remapped. If there are any left (your drive may be out of spare sectors), do a full chkdsk to mark them as bad.

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I endorse (for what it is worth) RainyShadow suggestions.

Making a "full" format may be not entirely a good idea, it depends on the specific "type" of bad sectors and the amount of them.

BTW tools like Victoria or MHDD will tell you not only which sectors are actually "bad" but also those that are "weak".

Now, there are two most common cases:

1) all (hopefully few) bad sectors are spread here and there on the hard disk then the full format is the way to go.
2) but if bad sectors are concentrated in a given area (which is typical of a head crash) it makes more sense to "isolate" the area, partitioning the disk in such a way that no partition extends over the "bad" area, as the number of "spare" (please read as re-mappable) sectors is limited, so if you have more than a few of them, you shouldn't "waste" them for a largish contiguous area

jaclaz

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6 hours ago, RainyShadow said:

HD Sentinel, Victoria, MHDD

No need to format the whole drive when you can just rewrite the sectors to trigger remapping.

Repeat the scan to ensure all bad sectors have been remapped. If there are any left (your drive may be out of spare sectors), do a full chkdsk to mark them as bad.

Hi , I don't know about Bulgaria , but here it's paid (except for the last ones , I think) and I'm guessing not easy to use for a novice . For example , HD Sentinel is 50 Euro , after a discount . I am still under the impression the OP was looking for a simple solution , no ?  Would you please give him precise instructions on how to use this software then ? 

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3 hours ago, jaclaz said:

.... but also those that are "weak".

jaclaz , Seagate HDDs are born to be weak , you of all should know this , no ? I only met some seagate HDDs that were made in the early 2000s to be somewhat OK .

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18 hours ago, Dixel said:

Hi , I don't know about Bulgaria , but here it's paid (except for the last ones , I think) and I'm guessing not easy to use for a novice .

What's wrong in using the trial version once?!

And it can't go worse than the wipe you suggested, even if blindly checking the functions (just don't touch anything that says "lock" or "set password") :P

 

[edit]

Sometimes sites like giveawayoftheday.com have free licenses for HD Sentinel Standard. I have used one such offer to get it on a few PCs in the past...

Edited by RainyShadow
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K ... so I went with Victoria and got even worse results (BAD), so I think it might just be time to start looking.
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Later today (maybe) I'll let it do the full scan and repair. For now, I did the quick scan and other than the (usual) inconsistencies and countless errors, it was normal. I mean, obviously its working or I wouldn't be posting so keep my fingers crossed each day.

I would still consider myself a novice user and rely on tools; I've come a long way from where I was, but still learning new things every day. Admittedly, this is getting way over my head.

If you only knew how long it took me to learn the universal remote TV Control ... Now when I try to change stations, the garage door opens and closes :crazy:

Edited by XPerceniol
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7 hours ago, Dixel said:

jaclaz , Seagate HDDs are born to be weak , you of all should know this , no ? I only met some seagate HDDs that were made in the early 2000s to be somewhat OK .

Sure, I do  have some familiarity with them, but a common mistake is to believe that the make (as opposed to specific model and even firmware version) means anything, some Seagate models were better than - say - WD, and WD often (but not always) have been better than another make - still there have been some  WD models that were crappy to say the least, and eben on a same exact make/model and firmware there have been reports of reliability differences depending on the actual factory in which they were made.

But I was talking of something else, "weak sectors", these may develop in time on *any* disk  and either remain "weak" "forever" or turn into bad sectors, even if - generally speaking - they are usually spread on the disk, if there is a certain number of such "weak" sectors near an area with a concentration of actually "bad" sectors it makes sense to exclude also the "weak" sectors, besides the "bad" ones from the partitioning.

BTW the reknown, at least here on MSFN,  Seagate 7200.11 saga wasn't at all about "bad" drives, only about a "wrong" firmware and a complete mismanagement.

jaclaz

P.S. @XPerceniol

Those are just the "smart" data, no need of Victoria to read them, and they are largely meaningless, see:

https://msfn.org/board/topic/153191-does-copying-several-giga-bytes-on-a-daily-base-screw-the-hard-drive/

what you need to do is the "test and repair", but - personally - I would try that only after having imaged the disk drive (or at least having made sure to have a recent, working backup).

Sure your SMART data, unreliable as they may be:

https://msfn.org/board/topic/177196-is-my-drive-still-healthy-seagate-sshd-1tb/?do=findComment&comment=1146918

don't look any good :( , particularly most of  the "key" (I would call them "only meaningful") 5 ones:

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/what-smart-stats-indicate-hard-drive-failures/

The main thing you must care about is to not stress the disk too much, and it would be a good idea if you need to image it, to do it in chunks and making sure (placing an old PSU fan near the disk is good enough) to keep it cool.

 

Edited by jaclaz
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3 hours ago, XPerceniol said:

K ... so I went with Victoria and got even worse results (BAD), so I think it might just be time to start looking.

Doesn't look that bad.

The SMART values indicate a single bad sector (that the drive is aware of) pending for a remap. There may be more though.

First do a full scan without any repairs. Take a note of the slow and bad sectors (i think there was a "save log" function in the bottom field).

If there are a lot of bad sectors, just cut them out of the partitions as jaclaz suggested.

If there are just a few, you can try to remap them. Set the scanning range to about +/- 100K sectors around the problem places, tick the "remap" option, then "start".

If the bad sectors appear to be "moving", this may indicate a problem with the heads (not likely in your case) - then backup whatever you can and don't bother more, just use it as a paperweight, lol.

 

Finish with a full chdsk scan (the /R option).

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52 minutes ago, RainyShadow said:

Doesn't look that bad..

You are right, re-looking at the values, they aren't that bad (set apart the ECC errors), the issues are likely related to age more than anything else supposing that the SMART data is accurate or - rather - if the way they are interpreted is correct, which is something I always greatly doubt.

It is something I simply hate, there is not any real, definite standard, each manufacturer uses RAW values that seem random and each and every tool seems more like guessing what they actually mean., the scarce documentation that you can find is either inaccurate, or wrong, or contradictory, or wouldn't apply to the model you have at hand, it's simply a huge mess.

jaclaz

 

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