Storage Solutions How many bad sectors are okay?

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blr_p said:
You sure about this ?

As in it does it automatically, thought you had to specify a sector and run the makebad command explicitly on it. His forum isn't the greatest of places to get any info, lots of snarky comments from suposedly knowledgeable ppl.

Anyway, once the scans are done i'll take a look at the logs and see what the differences are.
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I am not sure but I am fairly certain :ashamed:

And yes, there is very little info on this great lil app so I am only speaking from what I inferred from my use.

Good to know, drive vanishing in the BIOS is really scary :O

Thing is if that happened then the reallocate sector count must have been very high. You then did a reallocate again with remap and yet it appeared. And you do say BIOS so its not like some bootable sectors got corrupted or anything.
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yes. Its an 8 year old 40 gig ide 5400 samsung with a lot of bad sectors. I was using it as a scratch disk but have now retired it (needs another zerofill :P ).

But its a good "bad" drive to test stuff like this :ohyeah:

I've read posts where one person said that the slow sector count dropped signifncantly after a zerofill, it does have a tendency to rejuvenate things.
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ditto. I have read a few posts wherein someone said that zeros are read faster than FF, BB etc. so prolly that's at play here, though I don't believe a zerofill rejuvenates anything.

Thx for recommending it :)
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;)

here are a couple more which I like:

HDDGURU: HDD Capacity Restore Tool

(does work)

HDDGURU: HDD Low Level Format Tool

(zerofill)
 
..:: Free Radical ::.. said:
I am not sure but I am fairly certain :ashamed:
And yes, there is very little info on this great lil app so I am only speaking from what I inferred from my use.
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One way could be to check the SMART reallocated sector count after the remap and compare it with before the remap. If it increased then they've been reallocated. I'll know the answer definitively in a cpl of days tho i suspect there won't be a change.
..:: Free Radical ::.. said:
yes. Its an 8 year old 40 gig ide 5400 samsung with a lot of bad sectors. I was using it as a scratch disk but have now retired it (needs another zerofill :P ).
But its a good "bad" drive to test stuff like this :ohyeah:
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Sounds like a great use for a good "bad" drive :lol:

Did you ever figure out what made it come back after that remap tho ?
..:: Free Radical ::.. said:
ditto. I have read a few posts wherein someone said that zeros are read faster than FF, BB etc. so prolly that's at play here, though I don't believe a zerofill rejuvenates anything.
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Sure, and the person making that post did ask how long it would last ?

No one knows, these mechanical devices can give up the ghost anytime. They're fine for non-important backups and stored offline where they won't degrade anytime soon.

It does give one insight to what kind of drive you get after an RMA. Certainly not a spanking new one but a 'refurbished' one that's been profesionally rejuvenated. the latencies could be a good indicator. I just ran it on a new one and not a single green sector anywhere and this was a reburb laptop (!)

..:: Free Radical ::.. said:
HDDGURU: HDD Capacity Restore Tool
(does work)
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Read how it magically restores drives back to their spec'd capacity, not had the need for it yet.

..:: Free Radical ::.. said:
HDDGURU: HDD Low Level Format Tool
(zerofill)
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An erase with MHDD would acheive the same so what's this one got extra ? Is it faster. This low level format tool works in windows so i guess thats one plus, you don't have to dedicate an entire machine just for the task, and can do other stuff as well on the box.

I've read of ppl prepping brand new drives with low level formats and wonder whether its worth it ?

Instead doing just a plain scan with MHDD to test a brand new drive and examining the result would be good enough and a lot faster i'd have thought. These low level formats are only good if there's a problem or you want to securely wipe the drive.
 
"low level format" is a misnomer. it used to be done on those hard disks of yore, not those from the 90s.

Current "low level format tools" just do a zerofill.

The HDD low level format tool is just less of a hassle since you can run it in windows and it is indeed pretty fast.

Even I don't trust current hard disks although I have never had a hard disk failure which I couldn't recover data from. :)
 
First scan of a particularly old & rather sick drive :)


50 ERR INDX CORR DREQ DRSC WRFT DRDY BUSY AMNF T0NF ABRT IDNF UNCR BBK 00
[Maxtor 4G120J6 ] [ 240,121,728] [ 240,121,727] [ EST: **:**:** ]
±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±± ACT [ 18402 kb/s]
±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±± ° <3ms : 17894
±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±± ± <10ms : 920906
±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±± ² <50ms : 1121
±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±± Û <150ms: 195
±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±± Û <500ms: 29
±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±± Û >500ms: 30
±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±± ? TIME :
±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±± x UNC : 1443
±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±± ! ABRT :
±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±²±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±± S IDNF : 1
±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±± A AMNF : 35
±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±± 0 T0NF :
±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±± * BBK :
±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±± [100.0% ] [100.0% ]
±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±± Errors: 1479, Warnings: 59

Time spent: 01:58:31

To get new version visit http://mhdd.com
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Errors denotes how many bad sectors were found and warnings are the sum of sectors that take longer than 350ms to respond.

SMART values before setting erase delays=100ms followed by remap

Code: 
[size=2]HDD: Maxtor 4G120J6; FW: GAK819K0; SN: G6061XBE
--------------------------------------------------------
            Name                        Val Worst Raw
Att #   3 : Spin up time              : 215  215  9038
Att #   4 : Number of spin-up times   : 253  253  58  
Att #   5 : Reallocated sectors count :   1    1  636  
Att #   6 : Read channel margin       : 253  253  0  
Att #   7 : Seek error rate           : 253  252  0  
Att #   8 : Seek time performance     : 252  232  40726
Att #   9 : Power-on time             : 250  250  9547  
Att #  10 : Spin-up retries           : 253  252  0  
Att #  11 : Calibration retries       : 253  252  0  
Att #  12 : Start/stop count          : 253  253  149  
Att #  99 : Unknown                   : 253  253  0  
Att # 100 : Unknown                   : 253  253  0  
Att # 101 : Unknown                   : 253  253  0  
Att # 192 : Power-off retract count   : 253  253  0  
Att # 193 : Load/unload cycle count   : 253  253  0  
Att # 194 : HDA Temperature           : 253  253  0  
Att # 195 : Hardware ECC recovered    : 253  252  7691  
Att # 196 : Reallocate event count    : 253  253  0  
Att # 197 : Current pending sectors   :   1    1  2377  
Att # 198 : Offline scan UNC sectors  : 252  252  1  
Att # 199 : Ultra ATA CRC Error Rate  : 169    1  255  
Att # 200 : Write error rate          : 253  252  0  
[/size]

After remap completed, here's the SMART table again

Code: 
HDD: Maxtor 4G120J6; FW: GAK819K0; SN: G6061XBE
--------------------------------------------------------
            Name                        Val Worst Raw
Att #   3 : Spin up time              : 214  214  9371  
Att #   4 : Number of spin-up times   : 253  253  60  
Att #   5 : Reallocated sectors count :   1    1  636  
Att #   6 : Read channel margin       : 253  253  0  
Att #   7 : Seek error rate           : 253  252  0  
Att #   8 : Seek time performance     : 252  232  59854  
Att #   9 : Power-on time             : 250  250  10277  
Att #  10 : Spin-up retries           : 253  252  0  
Att #  11 : Calibration retries       : 253  252  0  
Att #  12 : Start/stop count          : 253  253  151  
Att #  99 : Unknown                   : 253  253  0  
Att # 100 : Unknown                   : 253  253  0  
Att # 101 : Unknown                   : 253  253  0  
Att # 192 : Power-off retract count   : 253  253  0  
Att # 193 : Load/unload cycle count   : 253  253  0  
Att # 194 : HDA Temperature           : 253  253  0  
Att # 195 : Hardware ECC recovered    : 253  252  14979  
Att # 196 : Reallocate event count    : 253  253  0  
Att # 197 : Current pending sectors   :   1    1  4207  
Att # 198 : Offline scan UNC sectors  : 252  252  1  
Att # 199 : Ultra ATA CRC Error Rate  :   1    1  255  
Att # 200 : Write error rate          : 253  252  0

I also ran an erase delays settings of 100ms expecting sectors slower than this to be marked as bad. But as you see there is no difference in reallocated sector count.

The only values that shows much difference is the hardware ECC count has increased and pending sectors seems to have increased.

So based on just the SMART values before and after running these ops, i'm not sure what exactly has been done.

Given the bad sectors were contained only within a small range on the drive i just made partitions around this area and use the drive for backup as is.
 
Man, is this thread awesome or what?!

I have an issue with my 320gb 7200.12. There were some major power issues in my area on the weekend, and my inverter ran out, resulting in the pc crashing a few times. Later, the hdd would suddenly stop functioning and windows would crash, and on restart the hdd wouldn't detect. A hard reset would bring it back. I should have figured it would fail. Now it does not detect at all, i suspect the board has electrical damage, and i have some important documents on it. The 100 odd gb of movies etc is inconsequential. The drive is in warranty. What do you guys suggest? i considered buying a new identical drive and swapping the pcb. i figure a 50% chance it might work.

edit:forgot to mention that the post freezes for a few seconds trying to identify the drive unlike an unpowered drive which it just whizzes by. Windows (xp) too takes a long time booting attempting to detect the drive if it's connected and powered.
 
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