Does this means what I think it does?

[AkiraLeir]

Being as brief as possible: Is this one done for?



It's been 1 and a half year since this drive got like that after a power outage. At first it wouldn't even let me boot into Windows with SMART enabled or with it connected to the motherboard. It was only recently that I decided trying bringing it back to life, and now I'm hitting this wall. Is this "pattern" an indicator that there's something terribly wrong with the physical parts, thus making this a hopeless case?

[hdsentinel]

Thanks for the image !

This pattern indicates that generally the sectors are still readable, there are no errors, but they are much slower than expected.

I'd use Disk menu -> Surface test -> Reinitialise disk surface test.

This forces the reprogramming of all data sectors, clears them and verifies and this re-programming and erasing usually helps hard disks to recover from such state. Then general usability of the hard disk usually improves, so I suspect then, a new read test may show better results, without such pattern.

Maybe if possible, I recommend to use Report menu -> Send test report to developer option, even multiple times (before and after the test).
This way it is possible to check the situation, examine not only the current status - but also possible change in reported counters / errors (if any).

[AkiraLeir]

Thanks for answering.

I'll let the Reinitialize disk surface test run to its completion this time, so it'll take a while to report back. I'll update this topic with the results.

About the test report, does it get sent to you automatically or should I paste it here?

To be quite honest this seems hopeless, since this model is well known for being one of the most faulty ever made by Seagate, so I wouldn't expect it to have any juice left.

[hdsentinel]

The best is to use Report menu -> Send test report to developer option.
This way I can check the complete status of the drive, no need to manually copy/paste.

Yes, considering the low health % value, personally I'd not expect too much - but it is possible that it may still be used for secondary storage (not for mission critical data).

[AkiraLeir]

Well, I wasn't able to finish the operation, since the computer froze after 70% or something.

From what I was able to check before going to sleep the pattern has disappeared, and only a few slower sectors remained. Is that a good sign?

[AkiraLeir]

I couldn't finish the task, since the computer would always freeze at 85~90% (I was not able to see it myself on the first try; It became apparent on the second attempt). The pattern from before has dissapeared though; only a few random sectors would show up as slower. Is that a good sign?

Anyway, is there anything else I can do to make such test without depending on the GUI or am I SOL and should go look for another tool?

Edit: Sorry for double posting; I didn't remember about the first comment, and also didn't think it would get through.

[hdsentinel]

As described at www.hdsentinel.com/smart page, yes, it is completely normal and expected to see that the drive (during repairing process) is not responding at all. In many cases, this way all software (and sometimes the OS itself) accessing the drive during this procedure seems not responding, waiting for device.
The seriousness of the problem may cause shorter delays (some seconds - minutes) to many hours or even days.

So when you see the "computer freezing" the drive is attempting to recover from problems.
If you power down / reset, then things may be more serious - or if you "lucky" then on next time the drive can continue and advance. This is why you first saw "freezing" at 70% and then later, if the previous bad area already finished.

This is completely independent from the software and OS, performed by the drive itself.
Hard Disk Sentinel forces the repairing in all possible ways, so as you can see, the minor issues (the pattern resulted by slowness) already fixed and the bigger problems are also repairing - just may take really long time - and in some cases (especially if the health is so low, there are too many problems with the drive) may not be possible at all.
No software can replace damaged hardware components - but we can try everything to recover from a bad state and attempt to repair the sectors - if still possible.

Maybe you can consider making a smaller partition (eg. 70-80% of the total capacity) and use that: as now there are no problems on that specific data area. In theory, if we do not access the other sectors near the end, we can use the remaining capacity for secondary storage.

[AkiraLeir]

Okay, I'm going to try splitting the drive in several smaller partitions (granted I can even access it anymore, since it has disappeared from the Disk Management window (haven't rebooted yet; will edit with further information)).

EDIT: Yeah, it looks like everything past the 2nd half of the drive is FUBAR, as I've made several partitions with just that half of it and it wouldn't even initialise/show up in the Disk Management window.

That seems to be better than a completely useless hard drive, so that should do it for the time being while I can't afford to get a new one.

Thanks for the help, nevertheless. Your tool has saved an once-thought-to-be-dead piece of hardware.