Why does HD Tune Pro give different results for same drive?

Tejstar

Tejstar

Tejstar

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A CCTV DVR from a family member has recently stopped recording video, which means playback over the last few days is no longer possible. Watching live video is fine. Hence, I figured that the HDD is likely dead.

The DVR uses a WD Purple 3TB drive and when connecting it to my PC it is still alive so thought I would run a test for errors/bad sectors. The first run on HD Tune Pro gave me the following result:

NbAlAol.png

This left me scratching my head as if the HDD was fine, I wasn't sure what the problem could be (maybe an iffy power supply?) Anyway, before trying to troubleshoot, I thought I'd do another run on HD Tune Pro, and this time it came back with the following result:

UTTKDd1.png

This second test was done straight after the first. My question is that, can I really trust HD Tune Pro if on the first run it says the drive is healthy, yet on another test I can see plenty of bad sectors. Why would it give different results in the first place? Anyone have any ideas?
 
CCTV drives (e.g WD purple) use different firmware that "don't care" if the data is written correctly (as the odd bit missing isn't a huge problem for CCTV recordings) therefore could give anomalous results in HDD testing software.

Smart info for relocated sectors etc is probably a better indicator of the drive health
 
Ah I see, that would make sense. It does seem that I cannot trust the data.

Thanks for the advice re: smart info for relocated sectors, I'll give that a try.
 
I could understand if it did it the other way around (by way of repair/relocating bad sectors). But definitely seems strange to incur at least 7 bad sectors within minutes of running a previous test. I would at least run a third test.
 
Semple said:
I could understand if it did it the other way around (by way of repair/relocating bad sectors). But definitely seems strange to incur at least 7 bad sectors within minutes of running a previous test. I would at least run a third test.
Click to expand...

I'm in the middle of the third test as we speak. Will post the results once I have them.
 
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