Disk repair test - access denied

[sentinental]

Hi, I'm having a problem with the "Disk repair test" function:

Code: Select all

10.2.2018  16:06:26 ! Error: 5 Prístup byl odepren., Sector: 912, Block: 0  File: No partition defined on this sector (unused sector).
10.2.2018  16:06:27   Test ID# OA 1 00030002 00250091 1 4  E: System Error.  Code: 6.

It shows this message (Přístup byl odepřen = access denied) for every sector since the beginning, taking about a second to move to the next one.

[I'm trying to reallocate pending sectors (current pending sector count 21) acquired during the last 2 years. It's frustrating to always be losing files just because the system keeps using bad sectors.]

The drive is truecrypt encrypted, but I did try running the test on a different drive on my system and the result was the same. Any ideas? The "read test" works no problem.

[hdsentinel]

Hi,

Thanks for your message and excuse me for the troubles, however, I'm 100% sure that it is not a bug/limitation of Hard Disk Sentinel software.

It seems something is completely blocking disk access during the test.
Not sure what can cause this - maybe Truecrypt in general, as it is possible that it prevents all possible write access (which is required in order to repair the drive). This is why Read test may work (as it only attempts to read, but not does not perform repairing).

Please use Report menu -> Send test report to developer option, as then it is possible to check the actual situation, it may give some thoughts about what can be in the background - and what can be done (if there is anything) to improve the situation.

> The drive is truecrypt encrypted, but I did try running the test on a different drive on my system and the result was the same. Any ideas?

Then the issue may be not related to truecrypt, but something else.
Once found and reported similar by an user - where virus/malware was active which completely blocked write (thus repair) access to all drives.
Not sure and I can just hope this is not the case now....

[sentinental]

Sorry for the late response. (Un)fortunately, i haven't been able to reproduce the issue the day after, so I was probably just too quick to complain when I should have instead tried the old "turning it off and on again" solution Who knows what was locking the drives.

The drive itself is another story, as it refuses to reallocate sectors even if marked "bad" (red) or damaged (yellow) during write tests. I've been seeing this behaviour in everyday use as well - it will happily write to a sector and then be unable to read from it.. and doesn't even care (0 reallocated sectors)

Seing the numerous dark-green areas, I decided to retire the drive as it's obviously dying (has been for almost two years).

Oh and one more thing: thank you for this wonderful piece of software!

[hdsentinel]

Thanks for the image and the results (and your kind words!)

Now it seems the drive is working correctly, I see no bad / damaged blocks and it seems the repair of many sectors successfully completed.
This happens when there were no reallocation required: the original sector is not physically damaged and it can be re-used.

Yes, there are some darker green areas where the disk works much slower than expected (on the Temperatre and transfer speed tab you can check) but generally, considering that the drive has relatively high health (and it repaired) I'd give a 2nd chance for it.

Personally I'd make a backup and connect with different cables and/or by external USB docking station (as such issues are relatively common caused by cables/connections, so it may be good idea to check with different environment).
Then I'd use the Disk menu -> Surface test -> Reinitialise disk surface test. This overwrites the entire drive numerous times and make the sectors "fresh" and empty (plus verifies the results). In many cases such minor stability and/or performance issues are fixed by this test, then a slower drive usually works much better, just like new (common for SSDs and hard disks too).
So it is possible that later, a further read test will show only light green blocks, confirming that the drive is generally better and improved.

If this is not true (the Reinitialise disk surface and/or a following Read test may show errors), then yes, it may be better to not store important data on the drive.

[sentinental]

I tried running the read+write surface test on some of the dark green areas (after connecting the drive to a different port using a different cable) and the results were not great. Quite a few of them are red/yellow, yet still only marked "pending" in SMART and won't reallocate. So I'm afraid it's bye bye drive

Just an idea for future versions: woudn't it make sense for the repair test to switch into "read+write (refresh data)" mode when faced with an exceptionally slow to read sector? It seems that in my case it eventually manages to read all of them (hence the dark greens in the repair test) but fails to write into them (reds in the read+write test).

[hdsentinel]

Sorry to hear the situation and the problems, yes, it seems the drive may not be working - not stable.

Thanks for the tip, yes, may be good idea. Will check the possibilities for a future version