Solved Checking for HDD sector damage

[teckneeculler]

Anyone able to recommend software (paid or free) for checking hard drive sector damage?
I've tried Partition Guru but I'm not sure its reports are accurate or adequate.

 

[Ranger4]

If you know the make of HDD you should be able to download a diagnostic program from their website to do a scan a give you a report of what is what.

 

[AddRAM]

Have you run a simple Disk check yet ?

 

[teckneeculler]

Doesn't that just check for file system errors?

 

[Megahertz07]

Check disk can be scheduled by drive properties - Tools - Error check (post #3)
or by a CMD command: chkdsk c: /f schedule for next boot = yes

As Ranger advised, a manufacture disk diagnose program will give you a complete report.

 

[teckneeculler]

Thanks guys. I ran the Windows checker, but, as you know, it doesn't list the results, just reboots and resumes Windows. Does it leave a report tucked away in the basement?

Anyway, I'm now running Western Digital diagnostics - maybe that'll spell out the results for damaged sectors.

Why I asked is that I've run PartitionGuru on the drive several times and on each occasion it's reported that there are no bad sectors, only what it calls, Excellent and Good (18025 and 1433 respectively).

Other labels are Normal, General, Poor, Severe and Damaged. These were all 0.

But then I realized that the subject drive - 160GB - has something like 3 million sectors, and PG is only listing 19458 in total.

There's not much data on the drive, so I'm wondering if PG only checks the sectors that contain data?

Oh, I should have first mentioned that the SMART process started reporting 'Imminent Failure, Will Robinson!'

I know a lot of people consider this message to absolute gospel but I dunno. I mean, it's software, after all. And what software is infallible?

BTW, none of this is a BFD, I'm just experimenting with loading an OS from a flash drive, and the WD drive was an old spare I had lying around. But I'm still curious as to why PartitionGuru only checks what seems to be a portion of the drive. It'll be interesting to see what WD Diagnostic comes up with.

 

[teckneeculler]

Later: WD Diagnostics ended, with a report that said the drive tested GOOD but that SMART gave it a fail.
This was apparently due to a reallocated sector count with these values:
ID Value Threshold Worst Warranty
5__ 99___ 140_____ 99___ 1
(dashes were the only way I could space out these numbers)

I've never been quite sure how to read these values. Comments?

 

[Megahertz07]

Boot from win 7 installation disk, go to repair and launch a CMD window.
type:
chkdsk c: /r

It will take a long time.
If it finds bad blocks or bad clusters, I would say that your disk is dying.

 

[mrjimphelps]

The SMART failure message indicates that this drive will soon fail. Therefore, I suggest that you don't use it for any actual data. However, there's no harm in fiddling with it, just like you have been.

 

[XweAponX]

I use GWscan, a tool made for gateway systems. It can read many makes of drives. It can scan the whole drive and block out bad sectors. If it detects a lot of errors, it will halt. When that happens, I use ViVard which has to limit. I fixed a drive that had about a quarter of it in bad sectors, when they are that bad, I just copy to a new drive. In fact the drive on the PC I'm using got that way, after I used ViVard, I copied it to a new drive. It took about a day and a half to scan the whole drive, but I recovered about 99% of my data.

When SMART trips, it usually prevents any HDD utilities like GWscan, WDDIAG or Seatools from running.

 

[FreeBooter]

If you want to repair bad sectors on HDD drive you will need to use your storage drive diagnostic tool i list two of the diagnostic tools. To repair bad sector make sure to do a Long or Extended scan. If there is lots of bad sectors then its time to backup your personal files and purchase a new storage drive.

Data Lifeguard Diagnostic for Windows

SeaTools for Windows

 

[teckneeculler]

The SMART failure message indicates that this drive will soon fail. Therefore, I suggest that you don't use it for any actual data. However, there's no harm in fiddling with it, just like you have been.

Actually, there's a considerable amount of information on the net that casts doubt on the total reliability of SMART reporting. As I said earlier, it's just software after all. We might as well assume that Windows itself is 100% infallible.

Anyway, I've found that it's possible to remove the, 'Your drive is about to fail!!' message that SMART shouts on every boot.

It's quite simple: In the system32 folder, take ownership of the file DFDWiz.exe (using the freely available Take Ownership registry fix) and rename it to DFDWiz.old. No more SMART warnings. Of course, it can always be renamed again if necessary.

And if DFDWiz.exe won't allow you to rename it, take ownership of the entire sys32 folder.

(I forgot to mention that it can also be turned off in the BIOS, if there's a setting for SMART)

BTW: I can recommend two free, Windows-based and easy-to-use sector checkers: Macrorit Disk Scanner and Areolic Disk Scanner. I've just run both of these scanners on the 'suspect' 160GB HDD and neither app found any bad sectors.

Nor did any other app, including WD Diagnostic.

Obviously, as I noted earlier, SMART based its 'down-check' on the drive's reallocated sector count. My guess is that, if the drive REALLY is suspect, and not just the subject of mistaken reporting, then this count will increase over time.

 

[XweAponX]

If you want to repair bad sectors on HDD drive you will need to use your storage drive diagnostic tool i list two of the diagnostic tools. To repair bad sector make sure to do a Long or Extended scan. If there is lots of bad sectors then its time to backup your personal files and purchase a new storage drive.

Data Lifeguard Diagnostic for Windows

SeaTools for Windows

It's also important to do this rather than running CHKDSK /x /r on the partition. Run WDDiag or Seatools in extended mode, then run CHKDSK /x /f on it afterword.

Unless the drive is smaller than 500 GB, then I might try CHKDSK full scan. A full scan on a 2TB HDD could take two days, and the process itself could damage the drive. I lost an invaluable one terabyte drive when I did that once

 

[teckneeculler]

XweAponX: It appears you didn't read my last post.

The systems I've detailed are far more effective and informative than chkdsk.