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Checking Bad sector in HDD and ExtHDD

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barney:
Just ran across this thread, nobody mentioned Steve Gibson's Spinrite?
-x16wda (June 26, 2012, 08:24 PM)
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Hm-m-m ... haven't tried SpinRite for many a year.  But I'm doubtful that it'd do anything more than the tools mentioned.  It was developed for an older HD technology, when software could actually have an effect on the hardware.

However.

Recently, the HD in a Dell laptop started giving problems (different thread, hardly worth quoting here).  I tried several HDD assurance/measurement/analysis utilities, some free, some paid.  All gave different results save for one (1) thing:  each predicted the imminent death of that drive.

I pulled the drive, plugged it into a USB to IDE & SATA connector.  I reran each of those tools.  Every one (1) gave the drive a clean bill of health, predicting a longer life-span than I'm likely to have.

Do you see a problem here?  The analysis software reported differently according to the environment.  That same drive is sitting on my desktop unenclosed, has been churning merrily along ever since.  Nary a hiccough.  Haven't had glitch one (1) with it. 

(There's another drive, a 3.5", that I housed for desktop usage ~seven (7) years ago.  It failed in a tower case.  I removed it, housed it (USB1), re-housed it (USB2) a couple of years later, and it has been running ever since, well beyond the projected lifespan.  However it is beginning to get noisy - I think bearings are about to die, and that will be terminal  :P.)

For my money, none of these analysis programs are worth more than a fortune cookie.  Change the environment, and they give totally different results.  I have no idea if the failing is in their reading of the S.M.A.R.T. data, or mayhap with the S.M.A.R.T. data itself, or even with the general concept/implementation.

Ditching hardware because of analytics is usually quite wasteful, often unwarranted, and very unsatisfying.  And it's very seldom educational in the process - frustrating, but not educational.

Point of all this is that, barring known physical damage, e.g. gravitational stress, .357 magnum, or the like  :P, it borders on foolishness to discard a drive based upon any diagnostic:  reallocate, yes; discard, no.

4wd:
Just ran across this thread, nobody mentioned Steve Gibson's Spinrite?
-x16wda (June 26, 2012, 08:24 PM)
--- End quote ---
Hm-m-m ... haven't tried SpinRite for many a year.  But I'm doubtful that it'd do anything more than the tools mentioned.  It was developed for an older HD technology, when software could actually have an effect on the hardware.-barney (June 26, 2012, 10:12 PM)
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I tried it once a while ago, (on an RLL based drive IIRC).  I was trying to see if it would sufficiently "rejuvenate" a drive to recover some files - I stopped it when the sector count reached a point that was four times the number of sectors on the drive.

After that I decided those types of programs weren't worth the trouble - zero fill & verify will be the most I do for a suspect drive now.

4wd:
You got that right, I slammed my fist down on my desk a few months ago - a month later a 1.5TB suffered head detachment.-4wd (June 26, 2012, 07:16 AM)
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And this is why it's not a good idea to get extremely annoyed while the drives are spinning:



All three platters were the same on both sides.

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