short test not finishing

[mike1983]

I used HDDSentinel on a hard drive that was connected to my computer, all the tests were fine. I bought a new usb 3 cable for connecting hard drives to PC's, yet when I try short self test it says something like "The self-test routine was interrupted by the host with a hardware or software reset." after 30 or 1min usually. Sometimes it does complete. Yet the extended self test seems to have no problems completing. Also when I was surface testing, it would complete the write but it again was interrupted during the read test. I use active@killdisk to wipe too and it seems to compete fine whilst connected.

Its the cable I bought from ebay obviously but why is it doing this? What does the error message mean? I tried using a different SATA cable and power cable, but no luck. Its making these error messages on 2 hard drives.

Thanks

[hdsentinel]

Generally, the Disk menu -> Short self test, Extended self test tests are hardware self tests, running completely "inside" the hard disk.
It means that we use special methods to start the test and then we periodically check the results, but generally we have no control about how the test is running.

Some hardware "between" the hard disk and Hard Disk Sentinel itself (for example the USB adapter you now use) may not be 100% compatible with these commands and methods. Usually (especially when these USB adapters / enclosures have special power management method) they may not allow these hardware tests to finish as they may issue a "reset" command (as you can see) and/or try to send the hard disk to sleeping status to reduce power consumption - without checking that a such hardware self test is running.
In both cases the running hardware self test (short self test, extended self test) stops.

Latest versions of Hard Disk Sentinel has protections for this situation, but it can't override the internal functions of the USB adapter.
If you have older version of Hard Disk Sentinel, an update to latest version may help.
Also you may use Report menu -> Send test report to developer option - as then it is possible to check the actual USB adapter model/type and the "raw" information reported by that, which may help to make special methods for this particular USB adapter.

This is usually related to the adapter and not the hard disk itself. As the Help describes, in these situations, the appropriate Disk menu -> Surface test functions can be used as they offer detailed overview about possible problems, performance degradations and so.

There should be no problem when you use Disk menu -> Surface test -> Read test to perform a complete, non-destructive testing.

FYI: if you are intereted in data destruction, Hard Disk Sentinel have the required functions as well: Disk menu -> Surface test -> Write test is designed to perform a quick but complete overwrite of the complete disk surface, to prevent data recovery. By default it overwrites with zeroes, but it is possible to select different overwrite patterns.
And if you require really the best way to destruct data, Hard Disk Sentinel also helps: Disk menu -> Surface test -> Reinitialise Disk Surace test is designed for this purpose. It overwrites the complete disk surface with special patterns, their inverse and then clears the data + verifies the result.
You may also click on the disk surface map any time to check the underlying sector contents, to verify that the data is properly and completely removed.