Hard drive Failing?

SoildSnake

SoildSnake

SoildSnake

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Joined
15 Feb 2010
Posts
474
I wiped free space with CCleaner and it crashed so had to delete the over writing file manually. Then i checked Hard Disk Sentinel and it said by drive is at 27% health and says "there are 111 bad sectors on the disk surface". I checked the smart data and the only issue is the "relocated sector count". I also checked it with Auglogics Disk Defrag and everything is green

I backup up my data, did a full erase of the disk, full format and check drive for errors using windows and they all passed but did not change the results. Whats the next step?

Can someone provide me a good HDD health program to verify its health

Are there programs that can fix this issue?

Thanks
 
I use Hard Disk Sentinel to monitor my drives and it's a good piece of software, it is very unlikely to be wrong. Where there are bad sectors you will see more reallocated sectors.

Bad sectors generally indicate that a HDD is going to fail, you've done the right thing by backing up all your data. Replace it or RMA it if it's still in warranty.
 
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I recently sorted my 2TB Samsung hd that had an issue with 'current pending Sector Count' flagged in various Smart monitoring utils. I thought the drive would sort that out itself and relocate the bad sectors over time but it never did. When waking the pc to sleep, the drive would not wake up and would vanish from the system, and more the system would hang (just drop to a blank screen) when viewing small videos on the drive as well as the odd file error. At this point I decided to see if I could sort it myself.

Got a new drive and copied what I could over, thankfully only 2 easily replicable files would not copy due to damage. So I fired up ES-Tool and did a scan of the drive and right off the bad it detected sector errors so I stopped it and went for a full erase which was a 10 Hour process and then did another scan (another 10 hour process). The drive came up clean and also cleared up the Smart Data so all comes back green now. I also took the opportunity to flash the drive with its latest firmware.

The drive seems to be operating normally now with no weird issues although I'm only using it for unimportant data right now such as tv media centre recordings.
 
Hi, I don't have an optical drive at the moment so does anyone know of a good windows-running program i can use instead of ES Tools?

How did you wipe the drive so as to clear the smart data; i figured either the data would stay or that a full erase using C Cleaner would do the trick?

Thanks for the comments guys
 
You could make a bootable usb stick and copy es tools over from the iso image. ES Tool is for Samsung drives so I don't know if its of use to you as We don't know what model of drive you are having issues with.

The full HD erase and full read check is what cleared the smart data as those pending sector counts were now relocated and no visible errors shown on the drive.

There was also a firmware update to fix issues with my particular drive HD204UI. http://knowledge.seagate.com/articles/en_US/FAQ/223571en
 
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I actually have that drive myself so ill update the firmware anyway!

The drive i am currently having issues with is a Samsung HD103UJ 1TB

I was asking for additional diagnostic programs because Hard Disk Sentinel has said another one of my drives is at 9% health and its a kind of new 4TB Black so suspected that its Hard Disk Sentinel that was the issue especially since Auglogics Disk Defrag said the SMART data was fine on the 1TB

Ill make a bootable USB. Just so i know would this program be able to fix the errors or is it simply a matter of time before the drive fails?

Thanks for the help
 
Unknown, that's what the programme is for. Run the drive diagnostics and see what it says. if its still comes up with errors after a full erase and scan then the drive has had its day. If it comes up clean then it will be something to keep an eye on. It could fail soon, or have a long life.
 
After trying to find a copy of ES tools i gave up and tried the following programs; Seagate Seat tools, WD Data lifegaurd, Hard disk sential and windows crashed every time i did a short test on the drive, (i did short tests on different drives to ensure it wasn't a software issue). As such it really does look like the drive is dying so ill be using is as a secondary backup
 
If you were having issue getting the file you only had to say. Although I am not sure why it was hard to find.

ES-Tool 3.00

Needs to be run from dos from a bootable usb,floppy,cdrom whatever.

Might be safer to disconnect any other drives while using the tool so no chance of accidental usage on other drives.
 
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