Bad sectors but when surface scan don't show any

[romelwelltech]

Hi forum community,


How come HD Sentinel show bad sectors but when I do surface scan it doesn't show any bad sectors?

Is this normal?

Thank you.

[hdsentinel]

Yes, this is completely normal and expected in ideal situation if you're lucky.
This is covered many-many-many times already on this forum


The "bad sectors" reported in the text description are no longer used by the hard disk: they are already reallocated.
It means that the spare area is used for all reads and writes targeting those bad sectors: so all reads/writes and any disk surface tests (even the tests in Hard Disk Sentinel) do not access those sectors, do not "show" them - but tests the remaining data area and the spare sectors used instead of the original, detected/reported bad sectors.

This is good, as this way you can be sure that the original (bad) sector does not contain important data and can't risk data loss, even if you partition, format the disk drive, install new system and fill the disk drive with important data.

By using the surface tests, you can verify if the currently used data area is error-free, there are no further errors reported (no weak, damaged sectors, no further problems). So we need to use the disk tests exactly to reveal and stabilize possible errors which not yet detected (eg. near the original bad sectors) OR ideally the tests confirm that there are no further problems, all such bad sectors already fixed by reallocation.

I do not really see the complete status of the drive, but generally having high number of bad sectors may indicate that more bad sectors may appear (for example neighbour sectors may be affected in later use).
The problem is that re-allocations may risk data and cause system instability. So having high number of reallocated sectors can be risky - even if a current disk test shows no problems at all.

For more information about these "bad sectors", please click on the "?" next to the text description on the Overview page and check

http://www.hdsentinel.com/faq.php#health

http://www.hdsentinel.com/faq.php#tests

The tests described on the above webpage help to
- identify further disk problems
- repair possible problems
- verify if the hard disk is now stable and error-free
(in this case you can even acknowledge the problems reported by Hard Disk Sentinel and clear the errors from the text-description)

If you prefer this, to restore the health to 100% and remove the errors from the text description, please check

Support -> Frequently Asked Questions -> How to repair hard disk drive? How to eliminate displayed hard disk problems? page:

http://www.hdsentinel.com/faq_repair_ha ... _drive.php


which describes how to acknowledge problems which are already fixed and restore the health. So then Hard Disk Sentinel will only report possible further degradations, new issues (if there will be any). For example (but not limited to) possible new bad sectors.

If you use Report -> Send test report to developer option any time, I can examine the status of the hard disk drive, verify the actual situation and can advise about how to clear the bad sectors, how the restore the hard disk health to 100% (after the tests confirmed that all such bad sectors already found and reallocated by the drive).