Trust a WD Green 500gb HD which Data Lifeguard says it repaired?

gregrocker · 13 Apr 2015

So based on your feedback I wanted to run another Disk Check on all 3 partitions from Win7 disk this time to afterward check the SMART sector count, but it's choking on the File Data in the Storage partition where all large ISO's for installers and image files are stored - hasn't budged from 6410 of 48000 files for hours. Do you think this has anything to do with the file size, or just sector failure?

There's no problem since these are also backed up on external and in Storage partitions on all other PC's in the house.

I plan to check SMART sector count after this completes, if it does.

paul1149 · 14 Apr 2015

Hi Greg,

I would say it depends on what stage of chkdsk (though I'm not sure you're using chkdsk...) it's hanging on. I've been told that once the file system part of chkdsk is done, the two final stages are data-agnostic. But I'm not sure that's entirely true, because I've found that deleting all partitions first, then creating a single blank partition of the entire disk enables chkdsk to complete in a fraction of the time.

BW,
Paul

Lady Fitzgerald · 14 Apr 2015

gregrocker said:

It's pretty old, at least 5-7 years I'd guess...

Five years old is a pretty ripe old age for any HDD, let alone a Green that only has a two year warranty. I would retire it and replace it with a new one rather than waste time fooling with it. A 500GB WD Green is only $55 and a 500GB WD Black (my personal preference for an internal drive) is only $69 at Newegg.

ignatzatsonic · 14 Apr 2015

WD 1 TB Blue drives are usually available at 55 and are regularly on sale every 2 or 3 months at 45. I picked one up for 45 from Amazon within the last week. They are 7200 rpm. As far as I know, they differ from blacks mostly in the warranty length and in that they are limited to 1 TB maximum size.

At $45 for a 1 TB drive, hard drives are pretty much a disposable, like a USB flash drive. Hard to justify staying with any drive you are concerned about considering the low price for a replacement.

Lady Fitzgerald · 14 Apr 2015

ignatzatsonic said:

WD 1 TB Blue drives are usually available at 55 and are regularly on sale every 2 or 3 months at 45. I picked one up for 45 from Amazon within the last week. They are 7200 rpm. As far as I know, they differ from blacks mostly in the warranty length and in that they are limited to 1 TB maximum size.

At $45 for a 1 TB drive, hard drives are pretty much a disposable, like a USB flash drive. Hard to justify staying with any drive you are concerned about considering the low price for a replacement.

Good point about the Blues. A 500GB Blue is $50 at Newegg; for only five shekels more, you can get double the capacity. If the Blues weren't capped out at only 1 TB, I would use them for my backups instead of the Greens.

gregrocker · 14 Apr 2015

paul1149 said:

Hi Greg,

I would say it depends on what stage of chkdsk (though I'm not sure you're using chkdsk...) it's hanging on. I've been told that once the file system part of chkdsk is done, the two final stages are data-agnostic. But I'm not sure that's entirely true, because I've found that deleting all partitions first, then creating a single blank partition of the entire disk enables chkdsk to complete in a fraction of the time.

BW,
Paul

This is what I was thinking of doing next, just to experiment. What do you think about wiping the drive with zeroes, then creating one large partition to full format, running Disk Check, Data Lifeguard long test and comparing SMART sector count again?

Does this provide any chance to reclaim the drive? Does it offer the possibility of comparing sector count to previous to see if the situation has improved? Or is it in your estimation wasted time?

I finally gave up on the chkdsk /r /f /x on the Storage partition after it remained stalled overnight. I am trying to rerun chkdsk /r on it now to see if it will report the problem without stalling out during a fix.

paul1149 · 14 Apr 2015

In my experience, it's usually not necessary to wipe the drive unless there are other problems beside sectors, including deep malware. The wipe forces a sector-by-sector inventory, but chkdsk /r does that as well. But deleting the partitions somehow does chkdsk a lot of good. I have had drives that failed the long test, and after doing the above they came out good. But 81 bad sectors is high. At that point the OS is liable to start breaking up, hanging, etc.

I can't explain that wacky inversion of test results you got, BTW. I would chalk it up to the short test being idiomatic, and the long test not flagging the drive as history quite yet.

gregrocker · 14 Apr 2015

So the chkdsk d: /r found no errors, after hanging all night with the /f switch added. Confounding. I'm obsessive enough I'm running chkdsk d: /f /r again.

If it will complete all three partitions then I'll compare the SMART again after full Disk Checks on all partitions. What am I looking for exactly in the Crystal Disk info?

Thanks for clarifying the Secure Wipe has no real usefulness here. I was not clear on that even though we know it is overkill for installation problems since only the partition table and boot code need clearing.

Per your suggestions I think I'll delete all partitions, do a full format and then test and chkdsk the drive again, just for comparison purposes. I understand 80+ bad sectors is fatal but want to make sure that isn't a false positive if that's possible.

paul1149 · 14 Apr 2015

LOL. These things are indeed crazy. With SMART attributes, #5 and ##196-199 (in hex, C4-C7) are usually the most important.

Layback Bear · 14 Apr 2015

I have one simple rule when it comes to hard drives.
If in doubt throw it out.

Any data worth saving is worth a proper working hard drive.
Doing test after test just is more wear and tear on the old hard drive.