Hello all,
I love this app. Its saved me a couple times. Worth every penny.
Currently my issue is that a 3.5 year old WD Gold 12 Tb internal HDD is showing 86 bad sectors and 360 weak sectors.
I have not really noticed any performance issues with the drive. So I ran a surface test and about 15 hours later the results were in and there was 1 bad sector.
So now Im running Disk menu -> Surface test -> Disk repair
Im mostly wondering why the initial warning from HDS with all the problematic sectors that turned out to be 1 bad sector.
WD Gold 12Tb 86 bad sectors, scan says otherwise
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hdsentinel
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Re: WD Gold 12Tb 86 bad sectors, scan says otherwise
Thanks for your message and the information.
> So I ran a surface test and about 15 hours later the results were in and there was 1 bad sector.
Not really sure where do you see 1 bad sector?
Do you see during (or after) the surface test, on the right area, next to the disk surface map that
Bad = 1
?
That means 1 bad block (not one bad sector).
Each blocks (small squares) represent 1/10000 of the disk surface, so there is good chance that hundreds of weak sectors are all found in one single block. This is not rare, usually weak/pending sectors are "near" each other.
I suggest to use Report menu -> Send test report to developer option - as then it is possible to check the status of the drive.
Investigating such problematic drives (and possible changes) always help further development and possible error detection / reporting / repairing.
> So I ran a surface test and about 15 hours later the results were in and there was 1 bad sector.
Not really sure where do you see 1 bad sector?
Do you see during (or after) the surface test, on the right area, next to the disk surface map that
Bad = 1
?
That means 1 bad block (not one bad sector).
Each blocks (small squares) represent 1/10000 of the disk surface, so there is good chance that hundreds of weak sectors are all found in one single block. This is not rare, usually weak/pending sectors are "near" each other.
I suggest to use Report menu -> Send test report to developer option - as then it is possible to check the status of the drive.
Investigating such problematic drives (and possible changes) always help further development and possible error detection / reporting / repairing.
Re: WD Gold 12Tb 86 bad sectors, scan says otherwise
Thanks for the quick reply.
Ive read threads here while waiting and it seems that these drives...uh, self-repair I guess is the best way for me to understand it. So maybe running this repair process isnt necessary after already having scanned the surface and rebooted.
Should I discontinue that running the repair operation?
Ive read threads here while waiting and it seems that these drives...uh, self-repair I guess is the best way for me to understand it. So maybe running this repair process isnt necessary after already having scanned the surface and rebooted.
Should I discontinue that running the repair operation?
Re: WD Gold 12Tb 86 bad sectors, scan says otherwise
So I ran repair and now the drive shows 24% health which is up from 15%
But obviously I need to replace it. Just waiting till I can afford a new drive
But obviously I need to replace it. Just waiting till I can afford a new drive
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hdsentinel
- Site Admin
- Posts: 3021
- Joined: 2008.07.27. 17:00
- Location: Hungary
- Contact:
Re: WD Gold 12Tb 86 bad sectors, scan says otherwise
As you can see, the Disk Repair helped to stabilize problems and slightly improved the Health and the general usability of the drive.
I double checked the report too, just to see things correctly. Yes, it showed the bad sectors and the weak sectors - if I'm correct, now, after the Repair finished, these weak sectors are fixed, so no longer reported (this caused the Health increase).
Yes, as you wrote, generally the disk drive designed to automatically repair possible problems as soon as it discovers the issue. Generally during any disk operation: disk testing, file copy, defragmentation etc. the drive can find new problems (like bad sectors) and begin the reallocation procedure. It means that the original bad sector automatically replaced with a spare sector: then all following reads/writes (and disk tests) will use this replacement sector instead of the original one which marked as "bad" and will be never re-used again - even after complete erase and re-format of any new partition(s).
The idea (from the viewpoint of the manufacturer) is exactly to make this transparent to the operating system and the user, so ideally we should never notice it: the drive seems working, maybe slower than expected (which we may not always notice during normal operation).
This is why some (minor) bad sectors can be acceptable ( https://www.hdsentinel.com/faq.php#health ) until their count reaches an error level threshold, when the drive is considered to be "bad".
However (of course) we can't say that the drive is perfect. Such sectors may damage and data corruption / data loss may happen. Also if the amount
of bad sectors is high there is good chance for further problems and higher chance for data loss. So we can't say that things are "perfect".
Ideally after some tests, there should be no new bad sectors and the drive should remain stable - so (even if the Health % is not 100%) it may be still used. Maybe not for critical data but for secondary storage it can be fine.
Generally this page
https://www.hdsentinel.com/faq_repair_hard_disk_drive.php
explains how to perform tests (to reveal / stabilize problems, so make sure that no NEW bad sectors should appear) and then clear the error counter in Hard Disk Sentinel to restore the Health % (I can help with step-by-step details).
I double checked the report too, just to see things correctly. Yes, it showed the bad sectors and the weak sectors - if I'm correct, now, after the Repair finished, these weak sectors are fixed, so no longer reported (this caused the Health increase).
Yes, as you wrote, generally the disk drive designed to automatically repair possible problems as soon as it discovers the issue. Generally during any disk operation: disk testing, file copy, defragmentation etc. the drive can find new problems (like bad sectors) and begin the reallocation procedure. It means that the original bad sector automatically replaced with a spare sector: then all following reads/writes (and disk tests) will use this replacement sector instead of the original one which marked as "bad" and will be never re-used again - even after complete erase and re-format of any new partition(s).
The idea (from the viewpoint of the manufacturer) is exactly to make this transparent to the operating system and the user, so ideally we should never notice it: the drive seems working, maybe slower than expected (which we may not always notice during normal operation).
This is why some (minor) bad sectors can be acceptable ( https://www.hdsentinel.com/faq.php#health ) until their count reaches an error level threshold, when the drive is considered to be "bad".
However (of course) we can't say that the drive is perfect. Such sectors may damage and data corruption / data loss may happen. Also if the amount
of bad sectors is high there is good chance for further problems and higher chance for data loss. So we can't say that things are "perfect".
Ideally after some tests, there should be no new bad sectors and the drive should remain stable - so (even if the Health % is not 100%) it may be still used. Maybe not for critical data but for secondary storage it can be fine.
Generally this page
https://www.hdsentinel.com/faq_repair_hard_disk_drive.php
explains how to perform tests (to reveal / stabilize problems, so make sure that no NEW bad sectors should appear) and then clear the error counter in Hard Disk Sentinel to restore the Health % (I can help with step-by-step details).
Re: WD Gold 12Tb 86 bad sectors, scan says otherwise
Thank you so much for the detailed reply, very helpful