Solved Hard Drive Refresh & Restore SMART Data

[Space Cowboy]

Hi,

I've heard this was not possible in the past but am wondering if there is a way to restore a SATA Hard Drive back to a state that will show it with no errors or bad sectors yet?

I don't think formatting or Fdisk ever was able to accomplish this in the past but surely someone has figured out a way to do a factory reset by now!

If so how can this be done? Is there a software out that will allow this so I can test it out and get a idea of how far my Hard Drives have started to wear out?

Thank You

 

[LMiller7]

There are standards for reading SMART data but there are no standards for how and where it is stored. Software capable of resetting SMART data would be proprietary and generally only available to data recovery professionals at very high prices.You would also require considerable drive specific information that is not publicly available.

I have no idea how you could obtain such.

SMART data has proven to be of some value in determining drive health. But any drive, new or old, can fail at any time, and often without warning or apparent cause. I don't see how resetting SMART data would be useful.

 

[samuria]

Only a low legal format would fix it but it can't fix bad sectors it retests and could find it's marked bad wrong so it would clear it

 

[Space Cowboy]

Thanks,

I just wanted to reset the hard drive as I suspect there maybe false SMART Data due to BSOD or bad shutdowns.

 

[samuria]

Those cause corruption only which is the file system not the hardware

 

[LMiller7]

The possibility of invalid SMART data is quite small. These are errors detected by the drive itself, not file system corruption which the drive wouldn't know about anyway. In any event there is no user ability to reset SMART data.

This is a good thing.

If there were utilities that could reset SMART data they would be available all over the Internet, along with detailed instructions for it's use and quickly found with an Internet search. The problem is that you could never be sure that the SMART data you are seeing had not been altered. Dishonest sellers could reset error counts and power on hours and sell a heavily used drive as new. Large numbers of drives sold on eBay and similar sites would have SMART values that had no relationship with reality. The use of SMART data would be largely nullified.

 

[Space Cowboy]

Thanks Again,

I get different results from different software?
That's why I was asking.

 

[file3456]

It could be embedded in a chip.

 

[mrjimphelps]

The only thing I believe you could try was if you had two identical drives, and you swapped the circuit boards of the two drives. If the SMART data is stored in the circuit board, it might clear the errors and re-read the drive.

I'm not sure that this would do what you want, but it might be worth a try, IF you have another drive which is identical in every way.

 

[LMiller7]

The only thing I believe you could try was if you had two identical drives, and you swapped the circuit boards of the two drives. If the SMART data is stored in the circuit board, it might clear the errors and re-read the drive.

I'm not sure that this would do what you want, but it might be worth a try, IF you have another drive which is identical in every way.

You really don't want to be doing that. The drive board contains information on one of the chips that is specific to the drive and these would need to be swapped on the boards. And the drives would need to be identical beyond the model number. There are specific numbers on the boards that must match. Drives with the same model number may have come from different factories and have significant internal differences. I don't know the details. If this is not done properly you will have problems, possibly including data loss.

The standards for SMART data aren't as well defined as they might be. Different software may interpret the data in different ways and show different results.

 

[mrjimphelps]

I know a guy who keeps detailed records of all hard drives he installs in his customers' computers. If any one of them ever has a failed hard drive, and he believes that it is the drive's circuit board, he will see if another customer has an identical drive. If he finds one who does, he will offer to upgrade them to a new, bigger drive for free, so he can retrieve the identical drive. He then swaps the circuit boards, in order to revive the failing drive. The way he tells it, it sounds like this has worked when he has tried it.

 

[LMiller7]

I know a guy who keeps detailed records of all hard drives he installs in his customers' computers. If any one of them ever has a failed hard drive, and he believes that it is the drive's circuit board, he will see if another customer has an identical drive. If he finds one who does, he will offer to upgrade them to a new, bigger drive for free, so he can retrieve the identical drive. He then swaps the circuit boards, in order to revive the failing drive. The way he tells it, it sounds like this has worked when he has tried it.

This may work in some cases but I would consider it very risky. You should have a full backup of the drive before proceeding. And be prepared to replace the drive if the procedure fails.